Sharing detailed research data is associated with increased citation rate

Sharing research data provides benefit to the general scientific community, but the benefit is less obvious for the investigator who makes his or her data available. We examined the citation history of 85 cancer microarray clinical trial publications with respect to the availability of their data. The 48% of trials with publicly available microarray data received 85% of the aggregate citations. Publicly available data was significantly (p = 0.006) associated with a 69% increase in citations, independently of journal impact factor, date of publication, and author country of origin using linear regression. This correlation between publicly available data and increased literature impact may further motivate investigators to share their detailed research data.