Roundtable on "Data sharing when collection is costly: do journals ask too much?"

In recent years, significant efforts have been made, both institutionally and academically, to enhance openness and transparency in research. Within the field of economics, numerous highly regarded journals have implemented Data and Code Availability policies, which typically require authors to publish their data and codes upon paper publication. Some journals have taken an additional step by verifying that the provided data and codes can effectively reproduce the results presented in the published papers. This rapid progression has already resulted in increased visibility and recognition for replication analyses, which have contributed to confirming important findings from previous papers while also highlighting results that were not robust to follow-up analyses. To ensure the continued progress and stability of these important changes, an ongoing and unresolved debate is essential within the profession. One key question revolves around the extent to which data sharing policies influence the strategic behavior of economists who work with data that is highly costly to obtain, such as digitized historical archives or primarily collected surveys. Could open data policies potentially discourage some researchers from investing in such data or delay their publication until they have completed additional papers before releasing the data? Should journals and funding agencies take this behavior into account when designing their policies? This session aims to foster such a debate by convening a panel of renowned academics who possess extensive experience and diverse perspectives on the various aspects of this issue.

The roundtable is organized jointly by the Local Organizing Committee, the EEA´s Research Committee, and the Econometric Society.