Open data mandates and what gets shared
Open data, data sharing and open science appear on 121 recent papers, with 36 in the last quarter against about 26 per quarter before, spread across every tracked field. Funders and journals now require data and code, and open government data portals have multiplied. Does the shared data get reused, and do mandates change what researchers study?
What prompted this
Since October 2025, 121 papers carry an open-data, data-sharing, open-science, data-availability or replication-package keyword (32 in AI journals, 29 in economics, 27 in finance, 20 in management, 12 in operations research): "open data" on 35, "data sharing" on 24, "open data portals" on 9, "open science" on 9, "data availability" on 7. The quarter to September 2026 had 36 such papers against about 26 per quarter earlier.
Questions
- Of the datasets and code deposited under journal mandates, what share can be downloaded and run years later, and what share is cited or reused?
- Do mandates push researchers toward questions that can be answered with shareable data and away from proprietary data such as bank records and firm microdata?
- Do open government data portals get used by firms and researchers in proportion to what they cost, and which datasets generate the use?
Data that could help
Journal data repositories and their download and citation logs, portal usage statistics, and the data sources named in published papers over time.
Next step
Sample 300 replication packages deposited under mandates in 2019–2021 and record whether each still downloads, runs and has been cited.