Current and planned adoption of data sharing policies by editors of Korean scholarly journals

Purpose This study analyzed the present status of data sharing polices and attitudes towards such policies through a web-based survey of editors of scholarly journals published in Korea. Methods From December 26, 2018 to January 3, 2019, a survey was distributed to 1,055 persons listed in the member directories of both the Korean Council of Science Editors and the Korean Federation of Science & Technology Societies. The survey contained four items on subjects’ information, three items that gathered information about the journals, and two further items on reasons for adopting or not adopting a data sharing policy and further opinions about such policies. Results Of the 100 respondents (from 100 journals), 13 stated that their journals had already adopted a data sharing policy. The strength of the policy was recommendation-only in 10 of those 13 journals. The most frequent reason for adopting a data sharing policy was to follow international trends. The repository sites were the Harvard Dataverse for two journals and Mendeley Data for one. The most common reasons for not adopting a data sharing policy were a lack of knowledge on data sharing, the possibility that submitters would not want to share their data, and the questionable effect of data sharing on scientific development. Conclusion Data sharing policies were uncommon among Korean scholarly journals. The advantages and disadvantages of adopting such policies should be discussed more actively among editors and researchers. Furthermore, data sharing infrastructure and training courses are required for data sharing policies to be established in scholarly journals in Korea.