A Review of the History, Advocacy and Efficacy of Data Management Plans

Authors: Nicholas Andrew Smale, Kathryn Unsworth, Gareth Denyer, Elise Magatova, Daniel Barr

Data management plans (DMPs) have increasingly been encouraged as a key component of institutional and funding body policy. Although DMPs necessarily place administrative burden on researchers, proponents claim that DMPs have myriad benefits, including enhanced research data quality, increased rates of data sharing, and institutional planning and compliance benefits.

In this article, we explore the international history of DMPs and describe institutional and funding body DMP policy. We find that economic and societal benefits from presumed increased rates of data sharing was the original driver of mandating DMPs by funding bodies.

Today, 86% of UK Research Councils and 63% of US funding bodies require submission of a DMP with funding applications. Given that no major Australian funding bodies require DMP submission, it is of note that 37% of Australian universities have taken the initiative to internally mandate DMPs. Institutions both within Australia and internationally frequently promote the professional benefits of DMP use, and endorse DMPs as ‘best practice’.

We analyse one such typical DMP implementation at a major Australian institution, finding that DMPs have low levels of apparent translational value. Indeed, an extensive literature review suggests there is very limited published systematic evidence that DMP use has any tangible benefit for researchers, institutions or funding bodies.

We are therefore led to question why DMPs have become the go-to tool for research data professionals and advocates of good data practice. By delineating multiple use-cases and highlighting the need for DMPs to be fit for intended purpose, we question the view that a good DMP is necessarily that which encompasses the entire data lifecycle of a project.

Finally, we summarise recent developments in the DMP landscape, and note a positive shift towards evidence-based research management through more researcher-centric, educative, and integrated DMP services.

URL : A Review of the History, Advocacy and Efficacy of Data Management Plans

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v15i1.525

Usages et pratiques en lien avec les données de recherche. Une enquête menée auprès des chercheurs de l’université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3

Auteurs/Authors : Hans Dillaerts, Céline Paganelli, Lise Verlaet, Hugo Catherine

Cette enquête s’inscrit dans le cadre du projet de recherche intitulé « Science ouverte et données de la recherche en SHS : entre politiques d’incitation et pratiques de la communication scientifique, quelle place pour les institutions et les bibliothèques ? » qui bénéficie pour une durée de 2 ans d’un financement de l’université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3.

Le projet vise à recueillir et analyser d’une part les usages et les pratiques des chercheurs de l’université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 en matière des données de recherche et d’autre part les pratiques institutionnelles et notamment celles des professionnels de l’IST au sein des structures documentaires et des bibliothèques universitaires.

Une enquête quantitative a été menée en 2019 sur les pratiques et les usages des chercheurs de l’université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 en lien avec les données de recherche. L’objectif de ce rapport est de présenter et analyser les résultats de cette enquête qui s’appuie sur un échantillon de 81 réponses complètes.

URL : https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02902710

Data journals: incentivizing data access and documentation within the scholarly communication system

Author : William H. Walters

Data journals provide strong incentives for data creators to verify, document and disseminate their data. They also bring data access and documentation into the mainstream of scholarly communication, rewarding data creators through existing mechanisms of peer-reviewed publication and citation tracking.

These same advantages are not generally associated with data repositories, or with conventional journals’ data-sharing mandates. This article describes the unique advantages of data journals.

It also examines the data journal landscape, presenting the characteristics of 13 data journals in the fields of biology, environmental science, chemistry, medicine and health sciences.

These journals vary considerably in size, scope, publisher characteristics, length of data reports, data hosting policies, time from submission to first decision, article processing charges, bibliographic index coverage and citation impact.

They are similar, however, in their peer review criteria, their open access license terms and the characteristics of their editorial boards.

URL : Data journals: incentivizing data access and documentation within the scholarly communication system

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.510

Le principe d’ouverture des données de la recherche scientifique. Réflexions autour du croisement de l’informatique et du droit

Auteur/Author : Agnès Robin

Les données de la recherche scientifique sont actuellement soumises à un programme de standardisation technique (FAIR) dont l’objectif est d’en permettre la diffusion aux fins de réutilisation par le public (entreprises privées ou autre).

Cette politique, qui sans se confondre avec elle, converge avec celle dite de « science ouverte », s’articule autour d’un principe normatif conflictuel, selon lequel le résultats de la recherche (et donc les données) doivent être « aussi ouverts que possibles et pas plus fermés que nécessaire », obligeant alors les chercheurs, ingénieurs et documentalistes, éventuellement chargés de la gestion des données de la recherche, à procéder à une qualification juridique délicate des données.

URL : http://intelligibilite-numerique.numerev.com/index.php/numeros/n-1-2020/9-le-principe-d-ouverture-des-donnees-de-la-recherche-scientifique

Journal research data sharing policies: a study of highly-cited journals in neuroscience, physics, and operations research

Authors : Antti M. Rousi, Mikael Laakso

The practices for if and how scholarly journals instruct research data for published research to be shared is an area where a lot of changes have been happening as science policy moves towards facilitating open science, and subject-specific repositories and practices are established.

This study provides an analysis of the research data sharing policies of highly-cited journals in the fields of neuroscience, physics, and operations research as of May 2019. For these 120 journals, 40 journals per subject category, a unified policy coding framework was developed to capture the most central elements of each policy, i.e. what, when, and where research data is instructed to be shared.

The results affirm that considerable differences between research fields remain when it comes to policy existence, strength, and specificity. The findings revealed that one of the most important factors influencing the dimensions of what, where and when of research data policies was whether the journal’s scope included specific data types related to life sciences which have established methods of sharing through community-endorsed public repositories.

The findings surface the future research potential of approaching policy analysis on the publisher-level as well as on the journal-level. The collected data and coding framework is provided as open data to facilitate future research and journal policy monitoring.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03467-9

Data-sharing recommendations in biomedical journals and randomised controlled trials: an audit of journals following the ICMJE recommendations

Authors : Maximilian Siebert, Jeanne Fabiola Gaba, Laura Caquelin, Henri Gouraud, Alain Dupuy, David Moher, Florian Naudet

Objective

To explore the implementation of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) data-sharing policy which came into force on 1 July 2018 by ICMJE-member journals and by ICMJE-affiliated journals declaring they follow the ICMJE recommendations.

Design

A cross-sectional survey of data-sharing policies in 2018 on journal websites and in data-sharing statements in randomised controlled trials (RCTs).

Setting

ICMJE website; PubMed/Medline.

Eligibility criteria

ICMJE-member journals and 489 ICMJE-affiliated journals that published an RCT in 2018, had an accessible online website and were not considered as predatory journals according to Beall’s list. One hundred RCTs for member journals and 100 RCTs for affiliated journals with a data-sharing policy, submitted after 1 July 2018.

Main outcome measures

The primary outcome for the policies was the existence of a data-sharing policy (explicit data-sharing policy, no data-sharing policy, policy merely referring to ICMJE recommendations) as reported on the journal website, especially in the instructions for authors.

For RCTs, our primary outcome was the intention to share individual participant data set out in the data-sharing statement.

Results

Eight (out of 14; 57%) member journals had an explicit data-sharing policy on their website (three were more stringent than the ICMJE requirements, one was less demanding and four were compliant), five (35%) additional journals stated that they followed the ICMJE requirements, and one (8%) had no policy online. In RCTs published in these journals, there were data-sharing statements in 98 out of 100, with expressed intention to share individual patient data reaching 77 out of 100 (77%; 95% CI 67% to 85%).

One hundred and forty-five (out of 489) ICMJE-affiliated journals (30%; 26% to 34%) had an explicit data-sharing policy on their website (11 were more stringent than the ICMJE requirements, 85 were less demanding and 49 were compliant) and 276 (56%; 52% to 61%) merely referred to the ICMJE requirements.

In RCTs published in affiliated journals with an explicit data-sharing policy, data-sharing statements were rare (25%), and expressed intentions to share data were found in 22% (15% to 32%).

Conclusion

The implementation of ICMJE data-sharing requirements in online journal policies was suboptimal for ICMJE-member journals and poor for ICMJE-affiliated journals.

The implementation of the policy was good in member journals and of concern for affiliated journals. We suggest the conduct of continuous audits of medical journal data-sharing policies in the future.

URL : Data-sharing recommendations in biomedical journals and randomised controlled trials: an audit of journals following the ICMJE recommendations

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-038887