[From the article, “Effect of Impact Factor and Discipline on Journal Data Sharing Policies” by David Resnik et al., published in Accountability in Research]

“…we coded … 447 journals … The breakdown was: 18.1% biological sciences, 18.8% clinical sciences, 21.7% mathematical sciences, 19.9% physical sciences.”

“Of the 447 journals evaluated, only 12 journals (2.7%) required data sharing as a condition of publication, and 35 (7.8%) required data sharing but did not explicitly state the effect on publication.”

“A total of 181 (40.5%) encouraged or addressed data sharing but did not require it, … 43.6% of the journals (195) did not mention data sharing at all.”

“Biological science journals in our subset were more likely than social science and mathematics journals to require data sharing…”

“Reproducibility and reuse should be important in any field of science, so it is somewhat surprising that biological science journals are more likely to refer to this concept in data sharing policies than journals from other types of science, especially since reproducibility problems have emerged in the clinical and social sciences (Collins and Tabal 2014, Open Science Collaboration 2015).”

“It remains to be seen whether journals outside of biology will start to place more emphasis on reproducibility as they deal with problems related to adherence to this important scientific norm.”

To read the article, click here.