Effect of Impact Factor and Discipline on Journal Data Sharing Policies

Data sharing is considered a crucial aspect of the research process, facilitating transparency and allowing for replication and re-analysis, with the ultimate goal of advancing science. Publishers are well positioned to promote sharing of research results.  While there is an increasing trend towards requiring data sharing, not all journals require data be shared at the time of publication. In this study, we extended previous work to analyze the data sharing policies of 447 journals across several scientific disciplines, including biology, clinical sciences, mathematics, physics, and social sciences. Our results showed that only a small percentage of journals require data sharing as a condition of publication, and that this varies across disciplines and Impact Factors.  Both Impact Factor and discipline are associated the presence of a data sharing policy. Our results suggest that journals with higher Impact Factors are more likely to have data sharing policies; use shared data in peer review; require deposit of specific data types into publicly available data banks; and refer to reproducibility as a rationale for sharing data.  Biological science journals are more likely than social science and mathematics journals to require data sharing.