(30 Sept 2020) As part of its continuing drive towards a more open and transparent research environment, Oxford University Press (OUP) has recently implemented new research data policies in over 290 of the journals in its portfolio.
The new policy, launched formally earlier in 2020, provides a framework through which OUP’s journals and society partners can proactively encourage authors to share their research data. There is a strong emphasis on the inclusion of data availability statements, which provide a standard means for improving the transparency of the research data underlying published research, and on the inclusion of full citations to datasets in reference lists, in line with OUP’s endorsement of the FORCE11 Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles.
The policy offers four different levels to accommodate the varying needs and established disciplinary practices across subject areas. As the nature of research data varies widely between different disciplines, each individual journal has set a field-appropriate data availability policy. The multi-level approach means that OUP can drive towards open research, while acknowledging that the process cannot be ‘one size fits all’.
OUP is a signatory to the Center for Open Science’s Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines which served as a framework for its approach. OUP also supports the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles, which is reflected in OUP’s data citation practices, and is participating in the STM Research Data Year.
The press release is here.
