PONE-D-19-18302

The views, perspectives, and experiences of academic researchers with data sharing and reuse: a meta-synthesis

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Perrier,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

The reviewers found the manuscript valuable; however, several things need to be addressed before it meets PLOS publication criteria. The most immediate is the need for additional analysis, to ensure the robustness of the results. There are also some minor concerns about the legibility of figures. I would encourage the authors to address all concerns raised in the reviews. 

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Cassidy Rose Sugimoto, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The use of CASP and the supporting Appendices provided the necessary information to ensure that the research was conducted in a technically sound way. The findings are described thoroughly and are supported by the data. The appendices and the quotations from the articles make it easier to determine if the data supports the conclusions.

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

No statistical analysis was conducted in this study; however, the independent coders used the appropriate metric CASP to ensure that the documents were of high quality. However, surprisingly, the authors did not describe or include any intercoder reliability statistics for either the CASP coding nor the analytical themes coding. A discussion of this should be included in the study.

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

Yes, the data is provided in a repository. Additionally, the authors provided a list of all manuscripts analyzed and the databases that were used in the appendices.

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

Yes, the language used in the manuscript is intelligible, with very few copyediting mistakes. There are occasionally lack of commas and other minor copyediting errors. However, the language throughout is vague, I would suggest editing throughout the make the paper more specific.

5. Review Comments to the Author

Other comments:

Figure 2 was nearly impossible to see, a higher quality image needs to be provided.

While this paper is well written and easy to follow, the findings leave the reading wanting to know why this study is important. It provides a summary of the other studies in data sharing, however, does not provide an understanding outside what is already known from the current data sharing research. I would suggest adding more to the discussion and conclusion to indicate why this study is important and what the academic community and data sharers, as well as repositories managers should learn from it.

Reviewer #2: This is an interesting “meta-synthesis” of 45 studies previously published that addressed data sharing. The conclusions are not surprising, and the results (the ‘synthesis’) has all been published previously, as well as in review articles about the same topic. This is not novel, nor are new suggestions made for further work to be done or solutions to be tested. Nevertheless, it represents a comprehensive review of 45 studies.

While the authors have aggregated concerns and opinions about sharing data, they provide no statistical analysis of the frequency of those concerns. This is a major limitation of the work. How often did a concern or opinion need to be observed in the meta-analysis in order for it to be listed as a major concern? Did any concern(s) rise above others or for different types of research data? What weight should be assigned to the importance of each of these many concerns?

While a majority of the studies utilized interviews as the principal methodology, 8 studies did not. Were there any differences between focus groups (or other) and interview results? Were any surveys found?

The authors appear to comingle studies that interviewed (or reported on focus groups of) researchers that are required to (or encouraged to) deposit data as well as attitudes of others (e.g. data scientists, students, data users, lawyers, etc.). One would anticipate that the opinions of each of these would be quite different, and different again from participants in clinical trials or research. How these different subgroups weighted their concerns, and how analyzed should be discussed. This may require incremental analysis by the authors.

It is surprising to this reviewer that there is no differentiation between the attitudes of scientists in the different fields: Investigators in some research disciplines are accustomed to sharing data (e.g. astronomy, genetics) and have standards in place for doing so. Researchers in other disciplines, most notably in human participant research where issues of privacy and confidentiality are central concerns, appear to drive reticence to share. The authors state that 17 of 45 studies were from “mixed” disciplines; nevertheless, this reviewer requests an analysis by type of research, and by ‘concern’.

The authors mention that one of the authors “conducted focus groups with academic researchers…and found that data saturation was reached after conducting four focus groups despite collecting data from discrete disciplines (i.e., health science, humanities, natural science).” How did that research factor into this current analysis and what significance does it hold?

Did the authors perceive any differences in opinions and attitudes over time?

Figure 2 is illegible. Why not present in a tabular form?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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The views, perspectives, and experiences of academic researchers with data sharing and reuse: a meta-synthesis

PONE-D-19-18302R1

Dear Dr. Perrier,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication.

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With kind regards,

Pablo Dorta-González, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors have sufficiently addressed all of the comments from the previous review and have added additional discussion of the methods, as well as a more thorough discussion of the importance of the study.

There are some very minor types throughout and the paper should be proofread one last time before publication.

Reviewer #2: The authors have not adequately addressed the comments of either of the two reviewers, both of whom had substantive concerns with the data, the presentation of the data, and the conclusion drawn. Further, both reviewers expressed concern that there were no to limited new observations or insights from this study. Observations are thematic, and not novel. Perhaps it is more appropriate for a more specialized journal.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No