Data from: 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.

共享研究数据可为全球科学界带来裨益，但对于公开自身研究数据的研究者而言，其实际获益却并不显著。我们针对85篇癌症微阵列（microarray）临床试验论文的引用历史展开分析，以探究其数据公开情况与引用表现的关联。其中公开微阵列数据的试验占比为48%，但其获得的总引用量却占到了全部统计引用量的85%。通过线性回归分析可知，数据公开与引用量提升69%存在显著相关性（p=0.006），且该关联不受期刊影响因子、发表年份以及作者所属国家的影响。数据公开与文献影响力提升之间的这一相关性，或可进一步激励研究者共享其详尽的研究数据。