Abstract

At a time when open data receives attention as an international trend, there is a need to discuss the role of international journals in Korea to support data sharing. Based on surveys and interviews of editors from the international journals, we identified factors affecting the policy adoption and examined the journal editors' perception on the adoption and components of the data sharing policy. As a result, scholarly journals that have adopted or are planning to adopt policies have recognized that data sharing is an international trend and can contribute to research development, but they stressed that efforts to improve the perception of data sharing were still necessary. Educational activities and compensation for sharing data were needed at scholarly journals’ and communities’ level. Also, components perceived important and selected by more than half of the editors as mandatory were ‘data availability statement’, ‘data sharing level’, ‘data sharing method’, and ‘data citation’. While scholarly journals do not always need to mandate data sharing, it was necessary to mention conditions where data cannot be shared through data availability statements. The role of the organization developing and operating a repository appropriate for situations in Korea was also emphasized. In addition, by identifying factors affecting the policy adoption, significant differences were found in Journal Impact Factor quartiles, publication type, and subject area. This finding indicated that journals with a high impact factor are likely to have resources to support data sharing, and open access or hybrid journals are likely to have interest in open data as a part of open science. In the medical research area, active movements for data sharing in academic communities have promoted the adoption of data sharing policies. This study would be used as basic data to facilitate the adopton and operation of scholarly journals’ data sharing policies in Korea.