Methodology
Data availability statements were extracted from the XML files of 30,706 articles published between 2022 and May 2024. These articles were cross-referenced with our production system to determine the country of the corresponding author. Each article’s journal was categorised into one of our journal portfolio groups, allowing for the identification of the primary subject domain.
We then excluded articles in which the data statement indicated that no data was created or analysed. The remaining 26,893 articles were categorised either as ‘open’ or ‘closed’. Statements were categorised as ‘open’ if they indicated that the data is available with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), will be available with a DOI in future or are available online (such as via Google Docs) or in the article’s supplementary files. Only articles with a DOI available for the data were defined as providing FAIR data sharing. Statements were categorised as closed if they indicated that data is available on request or due to a specific barrier to sharing.
The study is limited in certain respects. Statements are provided by the authors and any reasons provided for not sharing data are not independently validated. Some statements listed more than one barrier to sharing and, to avoid duplicate counting of articles in these cases, we selected the first reason provided. Other statements contained seemingly contradictory information and in these instances, we used judgement to interpret the most appropriate category.