Making Progress Toward Open Data: Reflections on Data Sharing at PLOS ONE

Since its inception, PLOS has encouraged data sharing; our original data policy (2003 – March 2014) required authors to share data upon request after publication.

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In an effort to make data sharing a more integral part of publication and scientific output, PLOS’ data availability policy requires data underlying the results presented in papers to be fully available at time of publication, unless certain restrictions apply. Authors do not necessarily need to share entire primary datasets, but must share the underlying data used to create graphs, figures, and other analyses presented in the paper. … Each research article published by PLOS includes a Data Availability Statement (DAS) that describes the location of the data and, if needed, declares any restrictions on making the data publicly available (for example, in cases of limitations due to sensitive data, ethics committee decisions, or the terms of what clinical study participants consented, or did not consent, to release).

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To support efforts to improve data availability and thus the transparency and reproducibility of research and to provide additional guidance to authors, PLOS has taken a number of steps:

– Formed a PLOS Data Advisory Board with broad community representation. With the Board’s assistance, we created the PLOS ONE 10-year Anniversary Datasets Collection and are working to develop discipline-specific guidelines.
– Independently, published guidelines by PLOS Genetics Editors for researchers in the area of genetics and genomics.
– Created an author FAQ that addresses some of the most frequent concerns we encounter, including preparing clinical data for publication so that it is adequately anonymized.
– Provided a list of recommended data repositories, continually updated as we examine new repositories for inclusion. If no specialized community-endorsed open repository exists, we also recommend authors consider university repositories that use open licenses permitting free and unrestricted use.

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