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，理应让当前及未来的研究者均可获取，但我们该如何最优地保障这些数据的可获得性？本研究针对四种数据归档方案的有效性展开评估：未制定明确归档政策、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。本研究通过仅收集采用单一且广泛使用的群体遗传分析工具STRUCTURE的论文数据，控制了数据类型差异带来的干扰。极端情况下，我们发现相较于未制定政策的期刊，要求在稿件中附上数据可用性声明的强制数据归档政策，能使在线获取数据的几率提升近1000倍。但对于采用相对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。此外，本研究还评估了直接向作者索要数据的效果：尽管平均耗时约8天且部分案例存在与作者的意见分歧，但成功获取了超过半数的申请数据集。鉴于数据可及性对学术共同体的长期价值，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制度应得到更广泛的推广。