Data policies in journals under scrutiny: their strength, scope and impact

Abstract

Journal data policies are a potentially strong incentive for researchers to make research data available. Therefore, information about these policies is desirable. This article presents an analysis of 346 journal data policies based on a 534 cross-disciplinary journal sample with a focus on how journal publishers expect authors to make research data available. Furthermore, it includes an analysis of features such as thematic scope, user costs and hosting organisations of 171 repositories with an entry in the Thomson Reuters Data Citation Index.