Analisys of journals' policies about storage and re-use of raw research data

Alexandre Benvaent, Rafael

Alonso-Arroyo, Adolfo

Ferrer-Sapena, Antonia

Peset, Fernanda

Sanchez Perez, E. A.

Vidal Infer, Antonio

English

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POSTER PRESENTATION 
JOURNALS' POLICIES OF STORAGE AND REUSE OF RAW RESEARCH DATA 
AND THEIR IMPACT IN FIVE SCIENTIFIC AREAS 
Aleixandre-Benavent, R. (1); Ferrer-Sapena, A. (2); Vidal-Infer, A (3); Alonso-Arroyo, 
A. (3); Sánchez Pérez, E.A. (4), Peset, F. (2).   
 
1. Ingenio (CSIC- Universitat Politècnica de València). UISYS (CSIC – University of 
Valencia). Spain. 
2. DCADHA. Universitat Politècnica de València. Spain. 
3. Department of the History of Science and Information Science. School of Medicine 
and Dentistry. University of Valencia. Spain. 
4. Instituto Universitario de Matemática Pura y Aplicada. Spain. 
 
 
 
 
 
Correspondence:  
Aleixandre-Benavent, R.  
Instituto de Gestión de la Información y el Conocimiento-Ingenio (CSIC-Universitat 
Politècnica de València). Unidad de Información e Investigación Social y Sanitaria-
UISYS (CSIC- Universitat de València) 
Plaza Cisneros, 4 
46003-Valencia 
Spain 
Rafael.Aleixandre@uv.es  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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BACKGROUND 
In order to enhance the fast dissemination of information and exchange of knowledge, it is 
required to make available for researchers both scientific literature and research raw data. The 
Open Access movement has allowed accessing the full text of many articles, thereby facilitating 
universal access to scientific advances. A further step is to open the raw data that support 
research to be shared and reused (data-sharing). Many scientific manuscripts consist of full text 
plus supplementary data to support the presented information. These additional data are too 
extensive to include them in the full text of the article, but some researchers may require these 
data to ensure that the experiment has been correctly conducted (Murray-Rust, 2008). 
Moreover, these data can also be useful, if reused, to supplement other work, make 
comparisons or generate new hypotheses. The purpose of this study is to analyse open-data 
policies concerning the availability of raw data in journals included in 5 subject categories (SC) 
of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and the relation of these policies with the impact factor 
and the quartile. 
METHODS 
We reviewed the websites of 451 journals included in the following JCR subject categories: 
Food Science and Technology (FS&T)  (124 journals), Pediatrics (115 journals), Information 
Science & Library Science  (IS&LS) (85 journals), Substance Abuse (39 journals) and Dentistry 
(88 journals). For each journal we documented the rules related to public availability of sharing 
research data as stated in the instructions to authors on the journal’s website. Data achieved for 
each journal included the following variables: a) Statement on deposit of complementary 
material attached with the manuscript; b) Acceptance of reuse of data included as 
complementary material; c) Acceptance of storage in thematic or institutional repositories. We 
also took into account the distribution of journals by impact factor and quartile in the 2014 JCR 
edition.  
 
RESULTS 
Table 1 shows the results obtained when the variable “Statement of complementary material” is 
accepted. The subject category with the highest percentage of acceptance is Pediatrics 
(81.7%), followed by FS&T (59%), IS&LS (50.6%) and Substance abuse (41.2%). In Dentistry 
journals, the percentage of acceptance is 19.3%. Statistical significant differences have been 
found in this variable through the four quartiles, with a higher acceptance in the upper quartiles 
(Q1 and Q2) and lower in Q3 and Q4. The highest values for journals ranked in the first quartile 
correspond to FS&T (24.2%) and Pediatrics (20.9%). 
Table 1. Acceptance of the variable “Statement of complementary material” 
Quartile in 
JCR Dentistry FS&T IS&LS Pediatrics 
Substance 
abuse 
1 10 (11.4%) 30 (24.2%) 16 (18.8%) 24 (20.9%) 4 (10.3%) 
2 4 (4.5%) 24 (19.5%) 13 (15.3%) 25 (21.7%) 4 (10.3%) 
3 3 (3.4%) 16 (12.9%) 7 (8.2%) 26 (23.6%) 4 (10.3%) 
4 0 3 (2.4%) 7 (8.2%) 19 (16.5%) 4 (10.3%) 
Total* 17 (19,3%) 73 (59%) 43 (50.6%) 94 (81.7%) 16 (41.2%) 
*Number of journals and percentage on total number of journals in each subject category 
The variable "Reuse" has presented the following results (Table 2): 73.4% of journals included 
in FS&T, 64.7% of journals in IS&LS, 56.4% of journals in Substance abuse, 30.4% in 
Pediatrics and only 19.3% in journals of Dentistry. The acceptance is higher in the upper 
quartiles. The highest values for journals ranked in the first quartile correspond to FS&T (25%), 
IS&LS (21.2%) and Substance abuse (20.5%).  
Table 2. Acceptance of the variable “Reuse” 
Quartile in 
JCR Dentistry FS&T IS&LS Pediatrics 
Substance 
abuse 
1 9 (10.2%) 31 (25%) 18 (21.2%) 6 (5.2%) 8 (20.5%) 
2 4 (4.5%) 27 (21.7%) 19 (22.3%) 9 (7.8%) 6 (15.4%) 
3 1 (1.1%) 25 (20.2%) 12 (14.1%) 13 (11.3%) 5 (12.8%) 
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4 3 (3.4%) 8 (6.5%) 6 (7.1%) 7 (6.1%) 3 (7.7%) 
Total* 17 (19,3%) 91 (73.4%) 55 (64.7%) 35 (30.4%) 22 (56.4%) 
 
The next variable, “Acceptance of storage in thematic or institutional repositories” (Table 3) 
presents results near 65% in three subject categories: IS&LS, Pediatrics and FS&T, near 60% 
for Substance abuse and only 37.5% for Dentistry. Here again, the acceptance is higher in the 
upper quartiles. 
Table 3. Acceptance of “Storage in thematic or institutional repositories” 
Quartile in 
JCR Dentistry FS&T IS&LS Pediatrics 
Substance 
abuse 
1 14 (15.9%) 30 (24.2%) 20 (23.5%) 20 (17.4%) 8 (20.5%) 
2 9 (10.2%) 25 (20.2%) 16 (18.8%) 21 (18.38%) 6 (15.4%) 
3 5 (5.7%) 20 (16.1%) 12 (14.1%) 22 (19.1%) 6 (15.4%) 
4 5 (5.7%) 6 (4.8%) 9 (10.6%) 14 (12.1%) 3 (7.7%) 
Total* 33 (37.5%) 81 (65.4%) 57 (67%) 77 (67%) 23 (59%) 
 
CONCLUSIONS 
Journals with a better position in the impact factor ranking have an open policy about scientific 
data. This behaviour has been also observed in previous works analysing policies of open 
research data in high impact factor journals in several subject areas (Alsheikh-Ali et al, 2011; 
Aleixandre et al, 2014 and 2016). This study has some limitations that should be considered: 
first, we analysed journals only in five subject categories included in the JCR; second, after the 
analysis of these policies we do not know the real frequency of data sharing among scientists. 
Future research should analyse policies about open research data in journals included in other 
subject categories of JCR. It will be also noteworthy to investigate the rate of papers in each 
subject category that really provide data for reuse, as well as the nature of these data.  
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
Supported by the National R+D+I of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the 
Spanish Government (projects: CSO2012-39632-C02-01 and CSO2015-65594-C2-2-R) and 
2015-Networks of Excellence call (project CSO2015-71867-REDT). 
REFERENCES 
1. Aleixandre-Benavent, R. et al. Public availability of published research data in substance 
abuse journals. International Journal of Drug Policy. 2014; 25: 1143–1146.  
2. Aleixandre Benavent, R. et al. Correlation between impact factor and public availability of 
published research data in Information Science and Library Science journals. Scientometrics 
2016; 107(1):1-13. 
3. Alsheikh-Ali, A.A., Qureshi, W., Al-Mallah, M.H. & Ioannidis, J.P.A. (2011) Public Availability 
of Published Research Data in High-Impact Journals. PLoS ONE 6(9), e24357.  
4. Murray-Rust, P. (2008). Open data in science. Accessed 23/02/2015. Retrieved from Nature 
Proceedings: http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2008.1526.1 (Archived by WebCite® at 
http://www.webcitation.org/6dfxgEt8X). 


Journals’ policies of storage and reuse of raw research data and their impact in five scientific areas

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Journals’ policies of storage and reuse of raw research data and their impact in five scientific areas

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