Data sharing policy at open access platform PLOS sparks debate among researchers
Online open access publisher the Public Library of Science (PLOS) is refining a new policy that requires authors to make their data publicly available upon the publication of the accompanying article.
“Access to research results, immediately and without restriction, has always been at the heart of PLOS’ mission and the wider Open Access movement,” PLOS stated in January. “However, without similar access to the data underlying the findings, the article can be of limited use.”
Some critics have argued that the policy would place an extra burden on researchers and expose sensitive information, such as patient data.
“Pushes for Data Access will inevitably, in real practice, result in constraints on the very diversity of science that makes it so productive,” a writer for the popular biomedical research blog Drunk Monkey opined. “It will burn a lot of time and effort that could be more profitably applied to conducting and publishing more studies.”
Amid the outcry, PLOS has since further clarified its stance, adding that the policy doesn’t dictate what type of data must be published but “aims to make transparent where the data can be found, and says that it shouldn’t be just on the authors’ own hard drive.”
(Next page: Researchers have conflicting opinions on data sharing.)
Mark Hahnel, founder of Figshare, a file sharing site for researchers that offers a portal for PLOS authors, said he was surprised by some of the negative reaction to PLOS’s announcement.
“The reaction was still slightly skewed to the favorable but there was more pushing back than I anticipated,” he said. “There’s still something that needs to be addressed.”
Hahnel said he created Figshare when, as a stem cell researcher, he realized most of his research was displayed better in data sets or videos, aspects that couldn’t be easily conveyed in a six-page article.
“Video doesn’t play on paper very well,” he said.
But making data available when an article is published can also help other researchers who working on similar projects, PLOS editors argued, and several other institutions and agencies now have similar policies.
The National Institutes of Health, for example, has required that researchers include a data sharing plan with their applications since 2003.
Hahnel called the recent pushback “alarming,” alluding to a study published in Nature in which nearly 70 percent of researchers said not having access to other researchers’ data was “scientific malpractice.” At the same time, only one-third said they would willingly share their own data.
“If you’re admitting malpractice, there’s something that really needs to be addressed,” Hahnel said.
Follow Jake New on Twitter at @eCN_Jake.
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