Is data sharing widely accepted as a good practice?
National scientific organizations have made a commitment to the sharing and archiving of data through their ethical codes (e.g., the American Sociological Association) or publication policies (e.g., the American Psychological Association). More than 15 years ago, the National Academy of Sciences described the benefits of sharing data. (See http://books.nap.edu/catalog/2033.html) For many years, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Economics Program has required data underlying an article arising from an NSF grant to be placed in a public archive. Similar expectations exist at the National Institute of Justice. Moreover, many scientific journals require that authors make available the data included in their publications. In the biological sciences, protein and DNA sequences are made available to researchers through data archives, such as GenBank. Since 1996, NIH has required data sharing in several areas, such as DNA sequences, mapping information, and crystallographic coordinates.
