Journals and their policies on Research Data Sharing | JoRD

"It is widely agreed that sharing of research data is important for both research transparency and the potential for re-use in further research. Yet despite the weight of positive comment, the mechanisms by which sharing might be effectively implemented still remain topics for discussion rather than functioning aspects of the research world.  The JoRD project at Nottingham University* confirmed doubts as to whether the principle of data sharing is operative in practice. The research concentrated on the role of research journals in mandating and enabling sharing. The team looked at the data sharing policies of journals in the expectation that these would provide good guidance on data structures and metadata, and direct authors to suitable web-linked repositories. In fact they found that the state of journal data sharing policies at the current time was what can be described kindly as patchy and inconsistent...."