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09/25/2018

Does Adopting a Strict Data Sharing Policy Affect Submissions?

To answer the question, some constraints on the data collected must be established

I wrote a post for The Scholarly Kitchen late last year about the business model for open data. The section that generated the most controversy was this:

…investing in data sharing seems to make the journal less, and not more, attractive to authors. For example, the shift in submissions from PLOS ONE to Scientific Reports coincides with the former’s adoption of a more stringent data policy. As long as authors see strong data policies as just another obstacle to publishing their work, journals will struggle to commit editorial resources to enforcing those policies.

The PLOS ONE story is just a single data point, and many other factors must have been involved – for example, the Impact Factor of their chief rival, Scientific Reports, jumped in mid-2014 from 2.9 to 5.0.

So, setting the PLOS ONE example aside, is there any better data out there on how the adoption of a data sharing policy affects journal submissions? Do authors find these policies so off-putting they take their articles elsewhere, or do they not seem to care?

Please select this link to read the complete blog post from The Scholarly Kitchen.

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