Data Availability Statements of Publications in Journals Indexed in the Dentistry, Oral Surgery and Medicine Category of Journal Citation Reports: A Meta-Research Study - ScienceDirect

Abstract:  To evaluate the frequency and types of data availability statements (DASs) of publications in journals indexed in the Dentistry, Oral surgery and Medical (DOM) category of Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database, and to identify risk indicators associated with the presence of DASs in publications. We searched PubMed on October 18, 2024, for publications presenting original research involving human subjects, published in journals indexed in the DOM category of JCR database, after July 1, 2023. Each included publication was assessed for DAS, which was categorised into different types using Springer Nature’s standard DAS framework. The risk indicators regarding author, study and journal levels were extracted. Logistic regression analysis were performed to assess the association between the risk indicators and the presence of DASs. A total of 998 publications were included. Fewer than half (49.7%) of the included publications contained a DAS. The 2 most common DAS types were datasets being available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request with a prevalence of 40.4% (N = 403) and authors directly providing the repository and/or weblink for the datasets with a prevalence of 3.0% (N = 30). The presence of DAS was significantly associated with funding status of publications, journal impact factor and journal requirement on DASs. DASs appear infrequent in publications in journals indexed in the DOM category of JCR database. Funded studies published in journals which require a DAS and journals with a higher impact factor were more likely to contain a DAS than studies which were not funded and published in journals which do not require a DAS with a lower impact factor.