“Because It Is the Right Thing to Do”: Taking Stock of the Peer Reviewers’ Openness Initiative

Abstract

The Peer Reviewers’ Openness (PRO) Initiative promotes the sharing of data and code. PRO signatories pledge to provide a full review only for manuscripts that publicly share data and code, or include a justification why sharing is not possible. Since the punitive element of this approach attracted criticism, we conducted a survey to assess signatories’ experiences with PRO. Contrary to the criticism, the reported experiences were predominantly positive, and 92% (117/127) of the signatories indicated that they would sign the initiative again today. Only 19 out of 127 respondents (15%) experienced negative reactions. Almost 50 respondents suggested ways in which PRO could be improved. We conclude that, from the signatories’ perspective, the benefits of the PRO initiative outweigh its drawbacks.

Keywords

• open science, data sharing, transparency, peer review, peer reviewers’ openness initiative, survey