PLoS Data Sharing/Archiving Policy

Steve Mosher on the PLoS policy for sharing materials, methods, and data:

By submitting to PLoS ONE, authors agree to make to make freely available any materials and information described in their publication that may be reasonably requested for the purpose of academic, non-commercial research. Authors should make every effort to allow immediate and unrestricted access to all data and replaceable materials that are relevant to an article, except where this would breach confidentiality rules related to human-subject research.

If restrictions on access to data or materials come to light after publication, PLoS ONE reserves the right to post a correction, contact the authors’ institutions and funders, or retract the publication.

PLoS ONE will not consider a study if the conclusions depend solely on the analysis of proprietary data. If proprietary data were used, and the authors are unwilling or unable to make these data public, then the paper must include an analysis of public data that validates the conclusions so others can reproduce the analysis and build on the findings. These policies have been developed in accordance with the principles established in Sharing Publication-Related Data and Materials (National Academies Press, 2003).

Data for which public repositories have been established should be deposited before publication, and the appropriate accession numbers or digital object identifiers (DOIs) published in the “Methods” section of the paper. Please contact plosone [at] plos.org with any questions about appropriate discipline-specific repositories.

If an appropriate repository does not exist, data should be provided in an open access institutional repository, a general data repository such as Dryad, or as Supporting Information files with the published paper. If none of these options are practical, data should be made freely available upon request.

The Mikovits/Ruscetti/Lombardi train-wreck could have been caught much earlier if that tabloid "Science" had a similar data sharing/archiving policy.