Highlights
- •This scoping review contributes to better understanding the interplay between journals, foundations, funding agencies, and professional organizations' current data-sharing policies and the commonalities and differences between them.
- •Most articles favor a discussion about the advantages of data-sharing more so than the disadvantages of data sharing.
- •A wide variety of commonalities and differences—such as the lack of standardization between policies, and inadequately addressed details regarding the accessibility of research data—exists in data-sharing policies endorsed by biomedical journals, funding agencies, and other professional organizations.
- •Updates to data-sharing policies should strive to provide clearer and more comprehensive instruction based on existing theoretical frameworks, the further development of accessibility of research data, and inclusion of detailed methods to prevent barriers to data-sharing.
- •It is important to identify and address key factors that contribute to the endorsement of and resistance to data-sharing, and to ameliorate the reproducibility of research results to ensure a solid foundation for safe and effective patient care.
Abstract
Background and Objectives
To identify the similarities and differences in data-sharing policies for clinical
trial data that are endorsed by biomedical journals, funding agencies, and other professional
organizations. Additionally, to determine the beliefs, and opinions regarding data-sharing
policies for clinical trials discussed in articles published in biomedical journals.
Methods
Two searches were conducted, a bibliographic search for published articles that present
beliefs, opinions, similarities, and differences regarding policies governing the
sharing of clinical trial data. The second search analyzed the gray literature (non–peer-reviewed
publications) to identify important data-sharing policies in selected biomedical journals,
foundations, funding agencies, and other professional organizations.
Results
A total of 471 articles were included after database search and screening, with 45
from the bibliographic search and 426 from the gray literature search. A total of
424 data-sharing policies were included. Fourteen of the 45 published articles from
the bibliographic search (31.1%) discussed only advantages specific to data-sharing
policies, 27 (27/45; 60%) discussed both advantages and disadvantages, and 4 (4/45;
8.9%) discussed only disadvantages specific. A total of 216 journals (of 270; 80%)
specified a data-sharing policy provided by the journal itself. One hundred industry
data-sharing policies were included, and 32 (32%) referenced a data-sharing policy
on their website. One hundred and thirty-six (42%) organizations (of 327) specified
a data-sharing policy.
Conclusion
We found many similarities listed as advantages to data-sharing and fewer disadvantages
were discussed within the literature. Additionally, we found a wide variety of commonalities
and differences—such as the lack of standardization between policies, and inadequately
addressed details regarding the accessibility of research data—that exist in data-sharing
policies endorsed by biomedical journals, funding agencies, and other professional
organizations. Our study may not include information on all data sharing policies
and our data is limited to the entities’ descriptions of each policy.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 11, 2022
Accepted:
November 8,
2022
Footnotes
Author Contributions: Austin L. Johnson- Conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, data curation, writing- original draft preparation, writing-final draft preparation. J. Michael Anderson- Conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, data curation, writing- original draft preparation, writing-final draft preparation. Max Bouvette- Data curation, article screening, writing- original draft preparation, writing-final draft preparation. Israel Pinero- Data curation, article screening, writing- original draft preparation, writing-final draft preparation. Shelby Rauh- Data curation, article screening, writing- original draft preparation, writing-final draft preparation. Bradley Johnson- Data curation, article screening, writing- original draft preparation, writing-final draft preparation. Micah Kee- Validation, investigation, writing- original draft preparation, writing-final draft preparation. Benjamin Heigle- Validation, investigation, writing- original draft preparation, writing-final draft preparation. Andrea C. Tricco- Conceptualization, methodology, project administration, validation, formal analysis, writing-final draft preparation. Matthew J. Page- Conceptualization, methodology, project administration, writing-final draft preparation. Patti McCall Wright–Software, validating, resources, formal analysis. Matt Vassar- Conceptualization, methodology, project administration, funding acquisition, visualization, writing- original draft preparation, writing-final draft preparation.
Declaration of interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Austin Johnson reports financial support was provided by National Institute On Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R15DA049201.
Funding: Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R15DA049201. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Andrea Tricco holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Synthesis. Dr. Matthew Page is supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (DE200101618).
Conflict of interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Data availability statement: Data are available in a public, open access repository. All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as online supplemental information. There is a link to the code and the data on the OSF (https://osf.io/pz6vq/).
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