Your professor is teaching a class on science communication. Write a post responding to the professor's question. Express and support your opinion and contribute to the discussion in your own words. An effective response has at least 100 words.
Dr. Cordelia Banks
Several journals now require authors to publish the data behind a paper alongside it. Supporters argue that a result nobody can check is not yet a finding. Critics reply that preparing data for release takes time that is not rewarded, that some data cannot be shared for reasons of privacy or agreement with participants, and that the requirement falls hardest on small research groups. Should journals require data to be published? Why?
Idris
Yes. The argument that it takes time proves too much: writing the paper carefully also takes time that is not rewarded, and we do it because the alternative is worse. If a dataset is too messy to release, that is usually a sign that it was too messy to analyse confidently either, and the discipline of preparing it for others is not wasted effort.
Hana
I agree in principle and worry about the exceptions being treated as excuses. Interview data with identifiable participants genuinely cannot be released, and the standard answer, anonymise it, is much harder than people who work with numbers imagine. A blanket rule pushes qualitative researchers either into breaking promises to participants or into journals with weaker standards.