The Public Library of Science announced Monday that researchers must be more transparent with their findings. 

The nonprofit publisher reversed its data-sharing policy and will now require researchers to provide their data immediately upon publication. 

Data, according to the PLOS website, include spreadsheets, sequence reads, verbatim responses from qualitative studies, software code, image files used to create figures and datasets.

Eric Stone, associate professor in the College of Sciences, said the idea of data transparency is beneficial overall, but there are some potentially harmful implications.

Stone, who has published research in PLOS journals and many other publications, said the new data-sharing policy isn’t unfamiliar to the field of biology, where he does most of his research.

“The PLOS issued a pretty strong message, but it’s not that different from how [biology researchers] feel,” Stone said. “Typically, what we’re supposed to do is make data freely available when we publish. If our project is federally funded, it’s a mandate. We’re expected to make data publically available, and there’s nobody forcing us to do it before the fact.”

For publications that aren’t completely open-source, if someone wants specific data from a research article, they will either find them in supplementary material or request them from the author directly, Stone said. Now, PLOS wants everything to be available immediately. 

“Researchers are used to this concept, but not with this degree of stringency and dogma,” Stone said. 

However, requiring data transparency can lead to privacy issues when researchers use human medical data, for example.

According to Stone, even if this type of data is summarized, it can still present a problem if made publically available, and the privacy of research participants has been compromised in the past.

“Would you want your own DNA sequence out there and available? I personally wouldn’t,” Stone said. “If someone was doing research involving medical records, should they make it publically available? No one thinks they should.”

“No one” includes the PLOS, which lists personal medical records as one of the few exceptions to its open-source policy, along with data about specific endangered species and third-party data the researcher may not have permission to publically publish. 

Stone addressed ways researchers protect the identity of their participants by attempting to keep personal information anonymous.

Stone said when you anonymize data you shouldn’t be able to determine someone’s identity, but in certain cases, participants’ identities have been determined this way. 

According to Emily Meineke, a graduate student in entomology, data transparency and open access is a good thing, but she also is concerned about the possibility of researchers “scooping” others’ data.

Meineke, who is currently studying the interaction between humans and insects in urban environments, had her first article published in PLOS.

“I have mixed feelings,” Meineke said. “It’s a good thing for studies to be as transparent as possible and for other researchers to be able to reproduce your results, and it’s a good thing for publically funded research—the data and the article together—to be publically available.”

Meineke said if it’s required to immediately publish the data, others can use the data sets she creates before she has the time to analyze it. 

“It’s possible that you provide this data that’s associated with one paper, but you haven’t analyzed it yet, so it’s available to other researchers that could then use that data and scoop you,” Meineke said.

Meineke said the potential problems caused by the new PLOS data-sharing policy are practical problems and not ethical ones.

“We’re just going to have to figure out the best way to do it so that everybody benefits,” Meineke said.

Stone also expressed some other potential problems for graduate researchers who publish using PLOS.

According to Stone, if a third-year doctoral student and a fifth-year doctoral student are compiling the same data set, the fifth-year student will publish his or her work first.

“If the data are made available to everybody, suddenly the other student is at risk of getting scooped,” Stone said. “Do you make the fifth-year [doctoral student] wait to publish and risk them not getting a job? When it’s sufficient to summarize the data, there is more leeway to be transparent without comprising other projects.”

 Overall, Stone said the PLOS policy change wasn’t radical, and it has “flipped the switch” so that full data disclosure must be sought at the time of publication.

“The expectation was always there that authors would supply their data, but there was no, and cannot be, post-publication mechanisms to enforce it,” Stone said.

Meineke published her first article in PLOS and is currently considering publishing more research in another journal that isn’t open access until a year after the study is published.