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Publishers' Responsibilities in Promoting Data Quality and Reproducibility

Scholarly publishers can help to increase data quality and reproducible research by promoting transparency and openness. Increasing transparency can be achieved by publishers in six key areas: (1) understanding researchers' problems and motivations, by conducting and responding to the findings of surveys; (2) raising awareness of issues and encouraging behavioural and cultural change, by introducing consistent journal policies on sharing research data, code and materials; (3) improving the quality and objectivity of the peer-review process by implementing reporting guidelines and checklists and using technology to identify misconduct; (4) improving scholarly communication infrastructure with journals that publish all scientifically sound research, promoting study registration, partnering with data repositories and providing services that improve data sharing and data curation; (5) increasing incentives for practising open research with data journals and software journals and implementing data citation and badges for transparency; and (6) making research communication more open and accessible, with open-access publishing options, permitting text and data mining and sharing publisher data and metadata and through industry and community collaboration. This chapter describes practical approaches being taken by publishers, in these six areas, their progress and effectiveness and the implications for researchers publishing their work.

Why sharing matters for electrophysiological data analysis

We present the case for the sharing of electrophysiological datasets and tools for their analysis. Some of the problems, both sociological and technical, associated with improving the sharing of data and analysis tools are discussed. The work that has been done to try to improve data and code sharing in the electrophysiology area is reviewed. The sharing aspects of the current large projects in brain research are considered.