Following my second completed AEA journals survey, I've spent this morning surveying Elsevier's economics journals (at least the ones I'm most interested in) to see what Elsevier is doing to take the lead in encouraging replication. From the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management Guide for Authors:
This journal encourages authors to submit a Data Profile with their article. The Data Profile is a structured summary of the data that have been used for the research described in the article, including brief descriptions and hyperlinks to data sets where applicable. It is displayed with the online (HTML) article on ScienceDirect to allow readers easy access to underlying data sets. With the Data Profile, Elsevier supports authors to make their publications more transparent, reproducible, and of greater utility for their readers. For more information, please visit http://www.elsevier.com/dataprofile.
Following the data profile link:
In order to add transparency and increase reproducibility of scientific results, it is important for researchers to identify, discover and use research data which underpins academic and scientific articles. At Elsevier, we support researchers to store, share, discover, and use research data. Our Data Profile is a new feature which will enable authors to provide a structured summary of the data that has been used in the article and its availability.
The Data Profile is an author-provided, structured summary of the research data presented in an article. It includes brief descriptions of the data and details about how, if and where the data is available. When provided by the author it will also include direct links to individual data sets. The Data Profile will be displayed next to the online article on ScienceDirect.
To encourage transparency, we encourage all authors in participating journals to state the availability of their data by using the Data Profile tool. Authors are also able to indicate if data is not available to access or appropriate to post for any reason within the authoring tool.
A "data profile" seems to be a relatively low cost way of documenting data from a published article for replication purposes. But, following the example links, "data profile" doesn't seem to reach that threshold, including links to the DRYAD data depository and USGS data website and simple offers from the authors to provide the data upon request. I don't see any structured summaries in the examples provided. It does not appear that JEEM articles are currently providing "Data Profiles" or requiring authors to offer data for replication purposes (e.g., here is the most recent stated preference paper published in JEEM).
A more minimal option is "Database Linking." Ecological Economics and Resource and Energy Economics suggest it in their Guide for Authors (and here):
Elsevier encourages authors to connect articles with external databases, giving readers access to relevant databases that help to build a better understanding of the described research. ... See https://www.elsevier.com/databaselinking for more information and a full list of supported databases.
Database linking seems to be the least a researcher should do (and what is currently being done with "data profiles"):
Elsevier encourages authors to deposit raw experimental data at relevant data repositories. Instructions for authors depend on the data repository: in some cases data is extracted from the article by curators, while in other cases authors need to upload their data manually. Detailed information is available with the individual data repositories given in the listing of supported databases.
In addition to database linking, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Energy Economics and Journal of Public Economics are encouraging authors to submit their data to Data in Brief. From JPubE's Guide for Authors:
Authors have the option of converting any or all parts of their supplementary or additional raw data into one or multiple Data in Brief articles, a new kind of article that houses and describes their data. Data in Brief articles ensure that your data, which is normally buried in supplementary material, is actively reviewed, curated, formatted, indexed, given a DOI and publicly available to all upon publication. Authors are encouraged to submit their Data in Brief article as an additional item directly alongside the revised version of their manuscript. If your research article is accepted, your Data in Brief article will automatically be transferred over to Data in Brief where it will be editorially reviewed and published in the new, open access journal, Data in Brief (http://www.journals.elsevier.com/data-in-brief). The open access fee for Data in Brief is $500. For authors who submit in 2015 a reduced fee of $250 will apply.
Data in Brief is an attempt to document data beyond database linking and data profiling. In my experience submissions are refereed, revised and then published with their own DOI (in addition to my article in Volume 3 there are now two additional articles in economics that have been published in Volume 5). The Data in Brief open access fee in 2014 was $50, $250 in 2015 and since it is now 2016 I presume the $250 offer has expired. My reservation price was $50.
Some Guide for Authors don't mention any data sharing options (e.g., Journal of Forestry Economics). Researchers, including me, aren't likely to offer to share data unless it is required by the journal.
