Journal data sharing policies are moving the scientific community towards greater openness but clearly more work remains

Data sharing is a key part of the drive towards greater openness in scientific research, allowing readers to reproduce and confirm an article's findings, or even reuse its data as part of a new study. Many journals have policies requiring researchers to share their data in full, with PLOS being a forerunner in this area. But how effective has the PLOS policy been in increasing the availability of data associated with articles? Lisa Federer reports on an analysis of the Data Availability Statements of more than 45,000 PLOS articles, finding that the ideal of open data is far from fully realised, with researchers’ use of repositories clearly an area for improvement.