A funder-imposed data publication requirement seldom inspired data sharing - Plos article

Available: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199789

Abstract

Growth of the open science movement has drawn significant attention to data sharing and availability across the scientific community. In this study, we tested the ability to recover data collected under a particular funder-imposed requirement of public availability. We assessed overall data recovery success, tested whether characteristics of the data or data creator were indicators of recovery success, and identified hurdles to data recovery. Overall the majority of data were not recovered (26% recovery of 315 data projects), a similar result to journal-driven efforts to recover data. Field of research was the most important indicator of recovery success, but neither home agency sector nor age of data were determinants of recovery. While we did not find a relationship between recovery of data and age of data, age did predict whether we could find contact information for the grantee. The main hurdles to data recovery included those associated with communication with the researcher; loss of contact with the data creator accounted for half (50%) of unrecoverable datasets, and unavailability of contact information accounted for 35% of unrecoverable datasets. Overall, our results suggest that funding agencies and journals face similar challenges to enforcement of data requirements. We advocate that funding agencies could improve the availability of the data they fund by dedicating more resources to enforcing compliance with data requirements, providing data-sharing tools and technical support to awardees, and administering stricter consequences for those who ignore data sharing preconditions.

Available: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199789

Data sharing in PLOS ONE: An analysis of Data Availability Statements

By Lisa M. Federer et al.

Published 2 May 2018

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0194768

Abstract

A number of publishers and funders, including PLOS, have recently adopted policies requiring researchers to share the data underlying their results and publications. Such policies help increase the reproducibility of the published literature, as well as make a larger body of data available for reuse and re-analysis. In this study, we evaluate the extent to which authors have complied with this policy by analyzing Data Availability Statements from 47,593 papers published in PLOS ONE between March 2014 (when the policy went into effect) and May 2016. Our analysis shows that compliance with the policy has increased, with a significant decline over time in papers that did not include a Data Availability Statement. However, only about 20% of statements indicate that data are deposited in a repository, which the PLOS policy states is the preferred method. More commonly, authors state that their data are in the paper itself or in the supplemental information, though it is unclear whether these data meet the level of sharing required in the PLOS policy. These findings suggest that additional review of Data Availability Statements or more stringent policies may be needed to increase data sharing.

Making Progress Toward Open Data

Reflections on Data Sharing at PLOS ONE

 

Blog post by Meg Byrne

http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2017/05/08/making-progress-toward-open-data/ 

New tools for PLOS Authors to support reproducibility and recognition

http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2017/04/protocols-io-tools-for-reproducibility/

PLOS now partners directly with protocols.io to provide authors better ways to share methodological details about their work, practical tools to reduce wasted research efforts and persistent, citable identifiers for laboratory methods. For PLOS, this is a step forward on commitments to address reproducibility and provide improved recognition and credit for all contributions to a work.

This new offering complements PLOS’ already robust data availability policy, requiring that data underlying the conclusions of an article be made available at the time of publication. Since the strengthening of this policy in 2014, about 60,000 articles have been published that contain a Data Availability Statement.

 

PLoS One. 2015 Feb 23;10(2):e0117619. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0117619. eCollection 2015.

Researcher perspectives on publication and peer review of data.

Kratz JE1, Strasser C1.

Abstract

Data "publication" seeks to appropriate the prestige of authorship in the peer-reviewed literature to reward researchers who create useful and well-documented datasets. The scholarly communication community has embraced data publication as an incentive to document and share data. But, numerous new and ongoing experiments in implementation have not yet resolved what a data publication should be, when data should be peer-reviewed, or how data peer review should work. While researchers have been surveyed extensively regarding data management and sharing, their perceptions and expectations of data publication are largely unknown. To bring this important yet neglected perspective into the conversation, we surveyed ∼ 250 researchers across the sciences and social sciences- asking what expectations"data publication" raises and what features would be useful to evaluate the trustworthiness, evaluate the impact, and enhance the prestige of a data publication. We found that researcher expectations of data publication center on availability, generally through an open database or repository. Few respondents expected published data to be peer-reviewed, but peer-reviewed data enjoyed much greater trust and prestige. The importance of adequate metadata was acknowledged, in that almost all respondents expected data peer review to include evaluation of the data's documentation. Formal citation in the reference list was affirmed by most respondents as the proper way to credit dataset creators. Citation count was viewed as the most useful measure of impact, but download count was seen as nearly as valuable. These results offer practical guidance for data publishers seeking to meet researcher expectations and enhance the value of published data.

Confusion over publisher’s pioneering open-data rules

The Public Library of Science’s open-data mandate has prompted scientists to share more data online, but not everyone is complying with the regulations.

Nature article 26 November 2014 - http://www.nature.com/news/confusion-over-publisher-s-pioneering-open-data-rules-1.16409 

Recommendations for the Role of Publishers in Access to Data

A paper based on a focus group that a number of us participated in has now been published (written up by Jennifer Lin & Carly Strasser) in PLOS Biology: "Recommendations for the Role of Publishers in Access to Data" http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001975

Making Data Count: PLOS, CDL, and DataONE join forces to build incentives for data sharing

By Jennifer Lin
Posted: October 7, 2014

In partnership with the University of California Curation Center at the California Digital Library,and DataONE, we are pleased to announce the launch of a new project to develop data-level metrics. This project is funded by an EAGER grant from the National Science Foundation. The project, titled “Making Data Count: Developing a Data Metrics Pilot”, will result in a suite of metrics that track and measure data use. The proposal is available on eScholarship (http://escholarship.org/uc/item/9kf081vf).

Sharing data is time consuming and researchers need incentives for undertaking the extra work. Metrics for data will provide feedback on data usage, views, and impact that will help encourage researchers to share their data. This project will explore and test the metrics needed to capture activity surrounding research data.

The Data-Level Metrics (DLM) pilot will build from the successful open source Article-Level Metrics community project, Lagotto, originally started by PLOS in 2009. ALM provide a view into the activity surrounding an article after publication, across a broad spectrum of ways in which research is disseminated and used (e.g., viewed, shared, discussed, cited, and recommended, etc.)

FROM: http://blogs.plos.org/tech/making-data-count-plos-cdl-and-dataone-join-forces-to-build-incentives-for-data-sharing/

Making Data Count: PLOS, CDL, and DataONE join forces to build incentives for data sharing

By Jennifer Lin
Posted: October 7, 2014

http://blogs.plos.org/tech/making-data-count-plos-cdl-and-dataone-join-forces-to-build-incentives-for-data-sharing/

In partnership with the University of California Curation Center at the California Digital Library,and DataONE, we are pleased to announce the launch of a new project to develop data-level metrics. This project is funded by an EAGER grant from the National Science Foundation. The project, titled “Making Data Count: Developing a Data Metrics Pilot”, will result in a suite of metrics that track and measure data use. The proposal is available on eScholarship (http://escholarship.org/uc/item/9kf081vf).

Sharing data is time consuming and researchers need incentives for undertaking the extra work. Metrics for data will provide feedback on data usage, views, and impact that will help encourage researchers to share their data. This project will explore and test the metrics needed to capture activity surrounding research data.

The Data-Level Metrics (DLM) pilot will build from the successful open source Article-Level Metrics community project, Lagotto, originally started by PLOS in 2009. ALM provide a view into the activity surrounding an article after publication, across a broad spectrum of ways in which research is disseminated and used (e.g., viewed, shared, discussed, cited, and recommended, etc.)