Data from: Mandated data archiving greatly improves access to research data

The data underlying scientific papers should be accessible to researchers both now and in the future, but how best can we ensure that these data are available? Here we examine the effectiveness of four approaches to data archiving: no stated archiving policy, recommending (but not requiring) archiving, and two versions of mandating data deposition at acceptance. We control for differences between data types by trying to obtain data from papers that use a single, widespread population genetic analysis, STRUCTURE. At one extreme, we found that mandated data archiving policies that require the inclusion of a data availability statement in the manuscript improve the odds of finding the data online almost 1000-fold compared to having no policy. However, archiving rates at journals with less stringent policies were only very slightly higher than those with no policy at all. We also assessed the effectiveness of asking for data directly from authors and obtained over half of the requested datasets, albeit with ∼8 d delay and some disagreement with authors. Given the long-term benefits of data accessibility to the academic community, we believe that journal-based mandatory data archiving policies and mandatory data availability statements should be more widely adopted.支撑学术论文的科研数据，理应在当下及未来均可为研究者所获取，但我们应如何最佳地保障此类数据的可获取性？本研究评估了四种数据归档策略的有效性：未明确制定归档政策、推荐（非强制）数据归档，以及两种在论文录用阶段强制提交数据的方案。为控制数据类型差异带来的影响，我们仅从使用同一种广泛应用的群体遗传分析工具STRUCTURE的论文中获取数据。研究结果显示，要求在稿件中附数据可用性声明的强制数据归档政策，相较于未制定任何政策的情况，可使在线获取数据的概率提升近1000倍。然而，实施宽松归档政策的期刊，其数据归档率仅略高于未制定任何政策的期刊。我们还评估了直接向作者索要数据的效果，最终成功获取了超过半数的请求数据集，但平均耗时约8天，且与部分作者存在意见分歧。鉴于数据可获取性对学术界的长期益处，我们认为期刊主导的强制数据归档政策及强制数据可用性声明要求应得到更广泛的推广。