How to deal with lack of cooperation during a replication request?

Question

A number of top journals in the social sciences now require that authors make their data available to others as a matter of policy. This seems like a move towards a (limited) type of "openness."

That said, there's a real difference between availability, grudging availability, and usefulness (which might include detailed instructions on how intermediate datasets were used to create final datasets, etc.).

We're all pretty busy, but when authors of a paper published in a journal with an "availability" policy appear to be stonewalling a data request, is there any recourse?

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Answer 1

You have very little recourse, unless the journal in which the paper was published has a policy on data availability/reuse and is willing to enforce it. Your first point of contact should be several, documented, attempts to contact the corresponding author. If you can contact some of the co-authors they might be able to assist in contacting the lead author. After that, you should contact the editor of the journal in question explaining which paper/author is in your opinion not complying with the journal's policy with your evidence. Then it is up to the editor to determine a course of action in line with the journal's policy.

Beyond that you only have public shaming and I'd be careful about doing that. You could describe the problems in a blog post say but could risk some backlash for doing so.

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