{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0024357","title":"Public Availability of Published Research Data in High-Impact Journals","abstract":"<h4>Background</h4>There is increasing interest to make primary data from published research publicly available. We aimed to assess the current status of making research data available in highly-cited journals across the scientific literature.<h4>Methods and results</h4>We reviewed the first 10 original research papers of 2009 published in the 50 original research journals with the highest impact factor. For each journal we documented the policies related to public availability and sharing of data. Of the 50 journals, 44 (88%) had a statement in their instructions to authors related to public availability and sharing of data. However, there was wide variation in journal requirements, ranging from requiring the sharing of all primary data related to the research to just including a statement in the published manuscript that data can be available on request. Of the 500 assessed papers, 149 (30%) were not subject to any data availability policy. Of the remaining 351 papers that were covered by some data availability policy, 208 papers (59%) did not fully adhere to the data availability instructions of the journals they were published in, most commonly (73%) by not publicly depositing microarray data. The other 143 papers that adhered to the data availability instructions did so by publicly depositing only the specific data type as required, making a statement of willingness to share, or actually sharing all the primary data. Overall, only 47 papers (9%) deposited full primary raw data online. None of the 149 papers not subject to data availability policies made their full primary data publicly available.<h4>Conclusion</h4>A substantial proportion of original research papers published in high-impact journals are either not subject to any data availability policies, or do not adhere to the data availability instructions in their respective journals. This empiric evaluation highlights opportunities for improvement.","journal":"PLoS ONE","year":2011,"id":4159,"datarank":9.260613069351582,"base_score":5.934894195619588,"endowment":5.934894195619588,"self_citation_contribution":0.8902341293429383,"citation_network_contribution":8.370378940008644,"self_endowment_contribution":0.8902341293429383,"citer_contribution":8.370378940008644,"corpus_percentile":98.46058636961399,"corpus_rank":200,"citation_count":377,"citer_count":100,"citers_with_citation_signal":100,"citers_with_endowment":100,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":true,"is_dataset_confidence":0.731,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2011-09-07","fair_score":33.125,"fair_percentile":11.037527593818984,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":41892,"name":"Waqas Qureshi","orcid":"0000-0002-5189-4417","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":41893,"name":"Mouaz H. Al-Mallah","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":148,"name":"John P. A. Ioannidis","orcid":"0000-0003-3118-6859","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":41894,"name":"Alawi Alsheikh‐Ali","orcid":"0000-0002-1213-4546","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":41895,"name":"Mouaz H. Al‐Mallah","orcid":"0000-0003-2348-0484","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":24430,"name":"Alawi A. Alsheikh-Ali","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":26,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":"21915316","pmcid":"PMC3168487","fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":"gold","license":"cc-by","views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":40.0,"fair_a":55.0,"fair_i":12.5,"fair_r":25.0,"fair_zscore":-1.122,"fair_rationale":{"fair_score":33.12,"has_llm":true,"dimensions":{"F":{"name":"Findable","score":40.0,"criteria":[{"key":"f_has_doi","label":"Has a persistent DOI","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":1.0,"signal":"DOI present","rationale":null},{"key":"f_repository_presence","label":"Indexed in repositories / literature DBs","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":1.0,"signal":"datacite=0, pmcid=True, pmid=True","rationale":null},{"key":"f_persistent_ids","label":"Resolvable scholarly identifiers (OpenAlex)","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"no OpenAlex id","rationale":null},{"key":"f_metadata_richness","label":"Rich, machine-readable metadata","kind":"llm","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":null,"rationale":"The text does not describe any rich, machine-readable metadata for the paper's own data, and the paper itself is about data availability policies, not about providing metadata for its own research data."}]},"A":{"name":"Accessible","score":55.0,"criteria":[{"key":"a_open_access","label":"Open Access / files deposited","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.5,"fraction":1.0,"signal":"Open Access","rationale":null},{"key":"a_retrievable","label":"Free full text retrievable","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"0 OA location(s)","rationale":null},{"key":"a_access_protocol","label":"Clear data/code access protocol","kind":"llm","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.5,"signal":null,"rationale":"The paper is an open-access article under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which provides a clear access protocol for the publication itself, but it does not specify a protocol for accessing the underlying research data of the 500 papers it analyzed."}]},"I":{"name":"Interoperable","score":12.5,"criteria":[{"key":"i_linked_data","label":"Linked datasets / DataCite relations","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"linked_datasets=0, datacite=0","rationale":null},{"key":"i_standard_ids","label":"References data via standard accessions","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"accessions=0, trials=0","rationale":null},{"key":"i_standards","label":"Standard formats, vocabularies & identifiers","kind":"llm","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.25,"signal":null,"rationale":"The paper mentions using standard file formats like XLS for supplementary data, but it does not describe use of standard vocabularies or persistent identifiers for its own data or the data it evaluates."}]},"R":{"name":"Reusable","score":25.0,"criteria":[{"key":"r_license","label":"Clear, open reuse license","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"no license","rationale":null},{"key":"r_downloads","label":"Demonstrated reuse (downloads)","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"downloads=0","rationale":null},{"key":"r_version","label":"Versioned / maintained","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"no version chain","rationale":null},{"key":"r_dataset","label":"Classified as a data resource","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":1.0,"signal":"is_dataset","rationale":null},{"key":"r_reusability","label":"Data-availability statement, license & reproducibility","kind":"llm","weight":2.0,"fraction":0.333,"signal":null,"rationale":"The paper includes a data-availability statement for its own supporting information (Appendices S1 and S2 as XLS files) but does not provide a license for reuse of those files beyond the general CC-BY license, and does not describe reproducibility of its own analysis."}]}},"suggestions":["Provide machine-readable metadata (e.g., structured data in JSON-LD or RDF) describing the paper's data availability survey dataset.","Include a persistent identifier (DOI or accession number) for the survey dataset and specify an access protocol beyond the supplementary files.","Use standardized ontology terms (e.g., from DataCite or FAIRsharing) to describe data types and policies in the survey data.","State a reuse license explicitly for the supplementary XLS files and add a reproducibility checklist for the survey analysis.","Deposit the survey dataset in a public repository and cite it with a DOI to improve findability and access."],"model":"deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash","agent_version":"fair_agent_v2","fulltext_source":"epmc_xml"},"fair_model":"deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash","fair_agent_version":"fair_agent_v2","fair_fulltext_source":"epmc_xml","fair_has_llm":true,"fair_computed_at":"2026-06-18T00:35:18.245075Z","clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}