New JMLA Data Sharing Policy
The Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) announces a new data sharing policy to go into effect on October 1, 2019. Authors of Original Investigation and Case Study articles will be required to (1) place the de-identified data associated with the manuscript in a repository and (2) include a “Data Availability Statement” in the manuscript describing where and how the data can be accessed. This policy aims to promote open science, enhance research reproducibility, enable data reuse, and bring the JMLA in step with other leading peer-reviewed journals with similar policies.
The JMLA defines data as the digital materials underlying the results described in the manuscript, including but not limited to spreadsheets, text files, interview recordings or transcripts, images, videos, output from statistical software, and computer code or scripts. Authors are expected to deposit at least the minimum amount of data needed to reproduce the results described in the manuscript.
Data can be placed in any repository that makes data publicly available and provides a unique persistent identifier, including institutional repositories, general repositories, or discipline-specific repositories that accept data of a particular format or in a particular domain.
Exceptions to the JMLA data sharing policy will be made in rare cases in which data cannot be shared due to their proprietary nature or privacy concerns.
This policy was drafted by the JMLA Data Sharing Policy Task Force (Kevin Read, NYU Health Sciences Library, New York University School of Medicine–New York; Liz Amos, National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD; Lisa Federer, AHIP, NIH Library, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD; Ayaba Logan, Libraries, Medical University of South Carolina–Charleston; and T. Scott Plutchak, AHIP, FMLA, Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences, University of Alabama–Birmingham) in consultation with JMLA authors, MLA staff and Board of Directors, and MLA Research Section and Data Special Interest Group members and in alignment with the recommendations of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Data Policy Standardization and Implementation.
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