New science data-sharing rules are two scoops of disappointment

"After more than a year of deliberation, editors of some of the world’s leading biomedical journals have come up with a declaration on data sharing destined to usher in a glorious world of transparency and rigor in science.

No, sorry, scratch that. What they’ve come up with is a policy with a couple of weak sticks and no carrots.

In an editorial this week, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) — which counts among its members the editors of such hard-hitting publications as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the BMJ — said that, starting in July 2018, members must require a data-sharing statement in all submitted manuscripts. But the committee stops short of requiring such sharing, saying only that editors 'may' take into account authors’ plans for data sharing when they’re deciding whether to publish a paper.

The upshot: A paper published in one of these journals may very well look no different a year from now than it does today, apart from a sentence that says something like, 'The authors will share their data upon request, subject to various conditions” — and that often means they won’t share it at all. Which is unfortunate from the organization perhaps best placed to change standards in science publishing: The ICMJE has 11 official members, but many hundreds morefollow the group’s recommendations.'