Empirical Study of Data Sharing by Authors Publishing in PLoS Journals
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Many journals now require authors share their data with other investigators, either by depositing the data in a public repository or making it freely available upon request. These policies are explicit, but remain largely untested. We sought to determine how well authors comply with such policies by requesting data from authors who had published in one of two journals with clear data sharing policies. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We requested data from ten investigators who had published in either PLoS Medicine or PLoS Clinical Trials. All responses were carefully documented. In the event that we were refused data, we reminded authors of the journal's data sharing guidelines. If we did not receive a response to our initial request, a second request was made. Following the ten requests for raw data, three investigators did not respond, four authors responded and refused to share their data, two email addresses were no longer valid, and one author requested further details. A reminder of PLoS's explicit requirement that authors share data did not change the reply from the four authors who initially refused. Only one author sent an original data set. CONCLUSIONS: We received only one of ten raw data sets requested. This suggests that journal policies requiring data sharing do not lead to authors making their data sets available to independent investigators.
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Some authors cite concerns about the confidentiality of data from research participants, the inappropriate use of secondary data, and lower rewards for conducting original research.
“Some authors cite concerns about the confidentiality of data from research participants, the inappropriate use of secondary data, and lower rewards for conducting original research [15, 16].”
From Assessing transparency practices in dental randomized controlled trials (2024) · cites this paper as [15]
The Discussion (page unavailable) says patient-privacy concerns are frequently cited and describes concerns about authorship, future publishing opportunities, and retaining access to hard-won data. It also describes fears that later researchers might undermine original conclusions, but does not characterize secondary data use as inappropriate; that part of the claim goes beyond the passage. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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The poor availability of psychological research data for reanalysis.
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Research works printed but not linked: 4
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“Some authors cite concerns about the confidentiality of data from research participants, the inappropriate use of secondary data, and lower rewards for conducting original research [15, 16].”
Background
- Authors
- Savage, C. J., & Vickers, A. J.
- Affiliations
- Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (US)
- Corresponding author
- Vickers, Andrew J.
- ORCID
- Vickers, Andrew J.
- Venue
- PLoS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2009-09-18
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- e7078
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC2739314
- OpenAlex
- W2047864778
- Cited by
- 411
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 33 · 2021: 27 · 2020: 43 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 29 · 2017: 25 · 2016: 24 · 2015: 39 · 2014: 27 · 2013: 24 · 2012: 21
- FWCI
- 37.76
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Prostate Cancer Foundation (P50-CA92629)
- Sidney Kimmel Center for Prostate and Urologic Cancers (P50 CA92629)
- National Cancer Institute (P50-CA92629-SPORE, P50 CA92629, P50CA092629)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Research Data Management Practices
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Keywords
- data sharing, data sharing policy, author compliance, PLOS journals, PLoS Medicine, raw data access, data repositories, research transparency
- MeSH terms
- Cooperative Behavior, Humans, Periodicals as Topic, Publishing, Research Personnel, Conflict of Interest, Access to Information, Editorial Policies, Biomedical Research
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