Open-access publisher PLOS has announced the expansion of its "Accessible Data" experiment, initially launched in March 2022 with the support of a Wellcome Trust grant. The experimental feature aims to enhance research data sharing and reuse by prominently displaying links to selected repositories on article pages through an eye-catching icon. In an effort to further promote data accessibility, PLOS has now expanded the initiative from the original three repositories to nine, encompassing approximately three-quarters of the outputs linked to PLOS articles.
The "Accessible Data" experiment was established with two primary goals: increasing the reuse of datasets linked to PLOS articles and encouraging authors to utilize data repositories by visibly recognizing and rewarding their use through article displays. Through an analysis of 543 Figshare datasets linked to PLOS articles, it was observed that the average number of views per month increased by a significant 20% relative to the control group.
Building upon the success of the initial phase, PLOS has introduced a third goal—to explore potential differences in reader engagement with various types of data and research outputs. To accomplish this, the number of qualifying articles to display the icon will be expanded by diversifying the types of repositories and outputs included. In this next phase, articles will be eligible for the icon if they meet the following criteria: They were published from 2016 onwards; They include a link to a research output in a repository within their Data Availability Statement; The link directs to a unique record in Dryad, Figshare, Open Science Framework (OSF), Github, Zenodo, Gene Expression Omnibus, Sequence Read Archive, BioProject, or Demographic and Health Surveys.
By expanding the scope of the icon, PLOS achieves two significant outcomes. Firstly, it triples the number of articles eligible for the feature to over 15,000, thereby rewarding more researchers and increasing the potential for discovery of research data and code. Secondly, the inclusion of different types of repositories enables PLOS to gain valuable insights into reader engagement patterns across domain-specific repositories in the life sciences, social sciences, and medicine, as well as generalist repositories.
The results obtained from this extended phase of the experiment will inform future strategies to foster the discovery and reuse of research outputs produced by PLOS authors.
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