Sharing Research Data in the Social Sciences: The Role of Journal Policies

This paper explores the relationship between social science journal data sharing policies and online data availability. The study was conducted to understand the effectiveness of data sharing policies on influencing researchers to share their data. Data availability for 65 articles published in social science journals with three types of data sharing policies (mandatory, recommended, or no policy) were examined. The study also examined the type and location of the data. A low percentage of researchers were found to share their original research data and the majority who shared their data were bound by a mandatory data replication policy. These findings suggest that there is a relationship between strong data sharing policies and the rate of data sharing. Journals can use these findings to inform decisions on maintaining, expanding, or enforcing policies.Master of Science in Information Scienc