The Data Availability Policies of Political Science Journals

This paper describes the data availability policies posted on the websites of a broad collection of political science journals. We code the policies of 221 political science journals, and we find that only 20% of these journals require researchers to share their data and/or code as a condition of publication. While requirements to share data and code are common among the most visible political science journals, these policies remain relatively rare in the discipline more broadly. In prioritizing reforms to improve openness and reproducibility in political science, we suggest remaining mindful of the relative rarity and simple effectiveness of requiring authors to share their data and code.