Data sharing in academic publications: The case of education journals

Abstract

While there is a rich literature reporting the prevalence of data sharing in many academic disciplines, and particularly STEM-related ones, the extent of data sharing in journals in Social Science fields has been subject to only little empirical enquiry, hitherto. Focusing on a particular Social Science discipline, Education, this research examines empirically two related issues associated with data sharing in Education.

First, journal data sharing policies were scrutinized via a search of the websites of 47 randomly selected Education journals. Over half of the journals in the representative sample had issued statements on websites encouraging authors to make the data underlying published research, generally available to the academic community, though only a handful of journals make such sharing mandatory. Thus, while the importance of data sharing is well recognized by journals in the Education field, a sizeable minority seems not to have taken a stand on this issue.

The second issue related to the efficacy of the positive stance taken by journals, in eliciting the desired response from authors, leading to the sharing of their data. This was probed in a limited, mainly qualitative, survey of the authors of papers published in journals that encouraged data sharing through their websites. It was found that not a single author had made data available – indeed, some authors were even unaware of the journal’s policy on this matter. Thus, journals’ well-intentioned procedures to encourage greater data sharing are seen to be markedly ineffective. Two main sets of reasons were offered to justify author reticence to data share: either authors did not regard it as being in their interest or data sharing was seen to be inappropriate or not possible for the data set in question. However, these fears relating to engaging in data sharing may not necessarily present insurmountable barriers to its wider adoption, as measures are available to circumvent, at least partially, or to meliorate their effect.