It’s easy to argue that open data is a critical part of enabling faster and more effective research discovery. In our new preprint, over on Authorea, we describe our researcher-centric approach to supporting open data and FAIR data (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable data) in Wiley journals. We talk about the rationale behind our revised data-sharing policies launched in November 2018, and the levels of adoption so far with each: “Encourages”, “Expects”, “Mandates” and “Mandates and Peer Reviews Data.” And we talk about how we’re supporting you, if you’re a researcher, with our journals and via our “Expects Data” policy. Our goal is to give you what you want or need so you can share your research data alongside your article. The full story is in our preprint, but here are some highlights. Please, do click over and have a read.

Our first step was to create a ‘Toolkit’ that would enable publishing colleagues and journals editors implement our “Expects Data” policy in a way that makes sense to the research authors whose work they publish. That means asking for data availability statements and data citations in every article. To make it as easy as possible for authors, we created a series of standard templates to complete their data availability statements. 

Then we began our “Expects Data” implementation plan, selecting journals serving disciplines that were most ready for data-sharing first. To give you a sense of the size of our project, in November 2018, about 1,500 Wiley journals had an entry-level “Encourages Data” data sharing policy, and with it no specific requirements for data-sharing. Since November 2018 we have made good progress. By March 2019 over 160 journals had adopted and implemented our “Expects Data” policy, or our “Mandates Data” policy. Each now requires researchers to include data availability statements to confirm the presence or absence of shared data in every article, as well as a data citations to the shared data. There’s no judgement made by the journal about the shared data, just a requirement for disclosure and for links if there are shared data to link to.

In the coming months we plan to measure and monitor the implementation of these policies via the publication of data availability statements and data citations. With this information, we’ll be able to celebrate adoption of data-sharing practices by the research communities we work with and serve. We intend to showcase great researchers from those communities leading in open research here on The Wiley Network. Please, do read more over on Authorea: Paving the Way to Open Data.