From policy to practice: Progress towards data- and code-sharing in ecology and evolution

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Ivimey-Cook, Edward R., Sánchez-Tójar, Alfredo, Berberi, Ilias, Culina, Antica, Roche, Dominique G., Almeida, Rafaela A., Amin, Bawan, Bairos-Novak, Kevin R., Balti, Heikel, Bertram, Michael G., Bliard, Louis, Byrne, Ilha, Chan, Ying-Chi, Cioffi, William R., Corbel, Quentin, Elsy, Alexander D., Florko, Katie R. N., Gould, Elliot, Grainger, Matthew J., Harshbarger, Anne E., Hovstad, Knut Anders, Martin, Jake M., Martinig, April Robin, Masoero, Giulia, Moodie, Iain R., Moreau, David, O'Dea, Rose E., Paquet, Matthieu, Pick, Joel L., Rizvi, Tuba, Silva, Inês, Szabo, Birgit, Takola, Elina, Thoré, Eli S. J., Verberk, Wilco C. E. P., Windecker, Saras M., Winter, Gabe, Zajková, Zuzana, Zeiss, Romy and Moran, Nicholas Patrick (2025) From policy to practice: Progress towards data- and code-sharing in ecology and evolution. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 292 (2055). ISSN 0962-8452

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Abstract

Data and code are essential for ensuring the credibility of scientific results and facilitating reproducibility, areas in which journal sharing policies play a crucial role. However, in ecology and evolution, we still do not know how widespread data- and code-sharing policies are, how accessible they are, and whether journals support data and code peer review. Here, we first assessed the clarity, strictness and timing of data- and code-sharing policies across 275 journals in ecology and evolution. Second, we assessed initial compliance to journal policies using submissions from two journals: Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Mar 2023-Feb 2024: n = 2340) and Ecology Letters (Jun 2021-Nov 2023: n = 571). Our results indicate the need for improvement: across 275 journals, 22.5% encouraged and 38.2% mandated data-sharing, while 26.6% encouraged and 26.9% mandated code-sharing. Journals that mandated data- or code-sharing typically required it for peer review (59.0% and 77.0%, respectively), which decreased when journals only encouraged sharing (40.3% and 24.7%, respectively). Our evaluation of policy compliance confirmed the important role of journals in increasing data- and code-sharing but also indicated the need for meaningful changes to enhance reproducibility. We provide seven recommendations to help improve data- and code-sharing, and policy compliance.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Data accessibility: All data and code used for processing, analysis and visualization are available at Zenodo (doi:10.5281/zenodo.15534781). Supplementary material is available online (doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.c.7979974). Funding information: R.Z. was funded by the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU, 20021/752) and gratefully acknowledges the support of iDiv funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG–FZT 118, 202548816). G.W. was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG–CRC TRR 212, 396782608). M.G.B. was funded by the Swedish Research Council Formas (2020-02293). Z.Z. was funded by the project SOSPEN (Spanish National Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation, 2021, PID2021-124831OA-I00) and the project SEASentinels (Spanish National Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation, 2023, CNS2022-135631) and acknowledges the Spanish government through the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S funded by MCIN/AEI 10.13039/501100011033, ICM-CSIC). This work was partially funded by the Center of Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS), which is financed by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and by the Saxon Ministry for Science, Culture and Tourism (SMWK) with tax funds on the basis of the budget approved by the Saxon State Parliament (via I.S.).
Uncontrolled Keywords: journal policy,open science,peer review,replicability,reproducibility,transparency,medicine(all),biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology(all),immunology and microbiology(all),environmental science(all),agricultural and biological sciences(all) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2700
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 17 Nov 2025 09:33
Last Modified: 19 Nov 2025 15:33
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/101017
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2025.1394

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