Data file for the paper “Safeguarding Research: A Review of Economics Journals’ Preservation Policies for Published Code and Data Files”

For many years, economics researchers have discussed the importance of sharing code and data files to ensure replicability. The discussion, however, rarely includes questions about long-term access to those files. This paper looks in-depth at the code and data policies from top economics journals to understand the guidance provided to researchers regarding data sharing and asks if that guidance supports preservation of code and data files for access and use, long into the future. We used content analysis to review journal policies from 184 economics journals. We discovered that while most journals recommend code and data be released with papers and that a few journals recommend practices consistent with long-term preservation, almost no journals specifically or emphatically consider long-term preservation of those files.

多年来，经济学领域的研究者始终围绕共享代码与数据文件以保障研究可重复性的重要性展开广泛讨论。然而此类讨论极少涉及此类文件的长期获取相关议题。本文深入剖析顶尖经济学期刊的代码与数据管理政策，以明晰其针对研究者的数据共享相关指导规范，并探究此类指导是否能够支持代码与数据文件的长期留存，以供未来访问与使用。我们采用内容分析法对184种经济学期刊的相关政策开展了梳理与分析。研究结果显示，尽管多数期刊要求论文随附公开的代码与数据，且部分期刊推荐符合长期留存标准的操作流程，但几乎没有期刊会专门或着重强调对上述文件的长期留存要求。