Guidelines and Best Practices to Share Deidentified Data and Code

Abstract

In 2022, the Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education (JSDSE) instituted augmented requirements for authors to post deidentified data and code underlying their papers. These changes were prompted by an increased focus on reproducibility and open science (NASEM 2019). A recent review of data availability practices noted that "such policies help increase the reproducibility of the published literature, as well as make a larger body of data available for reuse and re-analysis" (PLOS ONE, 2024). JSDSE values accessibility as it endeavors to share knowledge that can improve educational approaches to teaching statistics and data science. Because institution, environment, and students differ across readers of the journal, it is especially important to facilitate the transfer of a journal article's findings to new contexts. This process may require digging into more of the details, including the deidentified data and code. Our goal is to provide our readers and authors with a review of why the requirements for code and data sharing were instituted, summarize ongoing trends and developments in open science, discuss options for data and code sharing, and share advice for authors.