Binghamton political scientist Jeff Yates writes over at Prawfsblag that:
In political science there are very strong professional mores to share data with other researchers. In fact, it is usually expected immediately after publication of your first article using the data if not before that time (e.g. after presenting a working paper at a conference).
I think that Jeff is right about the social mores part but I wonder why especially the top journals seem to be lagging behind this norm. While journals like Political Analysis, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and International Studies Quarterly (this list is illustrative rather than inclusive) have policies that require authors to share their data and provide an infrastructure for such sharing (made especially easy by Dataverse), as far as I know the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and International Organization do not have policies that require and facilitate data sharing to the same degree.
Why is that so? On the face of it, it would seem easier for the absolute top journals to institute such policies as they run less of a risk that authors will forego submitting manuscripts because they do not want to comply with replication policies. I may be getting the incentives wrong here, in that there is a subgroup of scholars who prefers to submit to journals that have standard replication policies (it certainly has made my life easier). Any thoughts?
ps. This morning I found an e-mail from AJPS editor Rick Wilson that instituted new submission policies for manuscripts among which:” If a manuscript is accepted for publication the first footnote in the manuscript must explicitly state where the data used in the study can be obtained for purposes of replication. As well, any sources that helped fund the research must be pointed out in that footnote.” This is still not quite at the level of what some other journals are doing but it is a good step forward. (hat tip Eric L.).