Data policy in social science and humanities journals: a review of selected journals

Dissemination of research data is an important aspect of open research and publishing practices. Data publishing impacts sharing, collaboration between data creators and data users, transparency, reproducibility and accountability of research. How data are handled is therefore an important aspect of the Responsible Research and Innovation agenda of the European Union. Worldwide, researchers are meeting new opportunities of accessing, sharing, re-using, interpreting data and data citing. Currently in the Web of Science citations of data amount to 20% of the cited references in the social science and to 7% in the arts & humanities (White paper, 2015). In the frame of the COST-action ENRESSH, a review of the data sharing SSH journals and platforms is conducted. The review consists of two parts: (1) an overview of SSH journals and platforms that focus on publishing and sharing data, and (2) an analysis of the data policies of a random sample of SSH journals. For the latter analysis we looked up the online author instructions and journal policy for the year 2017 of a random set of SSH journals selected from the Finish journal list. Per journal, the existing data-publishing policy is examined in light of established processes. We paid particular attention to data journals and journals special sections for data papers and for supplementary materials. Where relevant, the open data policy and supplementary material policy were examined and a comparison has been made between standard subscription based journals and open access journals in this regard. We will present first findings of this review during the workshop.