Data- and code-archiving in the British Ecological Society journals: present status and recommendations for future improvements

Natalie Cooper, Bethany Allen , Nour Almaani , Res Altwegg , Julia Balogh , Heikel Balti , Robert A. Barber , Maria E. Barbosa de Sousa, Jose Gabriel Nino Barreat , Cassandra Faye Barrett , Ryan Bates, Alexia M.J.M. Beale, Louis Bliard , Nynke Blömer , Dariia Borovyk , Charlotte Bunnenberg , Elizabeth Bygate , Lucy Victoria Cash , Nilanjan Chatterjee , Ting-Wen Chen , Arianna Chiti , Sheena Suet-Wah Chung , Hector Chuquillanqui Soto , Anna Ciezarek, Archie William Clarkson , Edward A. Codling, Andrea Corradini , Amber Cowans , Sofia Dartnell, Amy JS Davis , Luciano Ludovico Maria De Benedictis , Gideon Deme Gywa, Christian Devenish, Shreya Dimri , Carolin Dittrich , Kalyn Dorheim, Harriet B. Drage, Manuel-Angel Duenas , Angelena Efstathiou, Luke C Evans , Myrna Elis Ferreira Santos , Alicia J. Foxx, Ross Gardiner , Joseph Gaudard , William Gearty , Laura Graham, Victoria M. Graves, Holly M Green , Rosemary V. Greensmith, Sylvain Gérard , Aud Helen Halbritter , Tamara R Hartke , Robert Hechler , Bethan Hindle , Pen-Yuan Hsing , Sonia Illanas , Graziella Iossa , Eleanor E. Jackson , Lewis A. Jones , Faith A M Jones , Joshua Aaron Jones , Jonathan F. Jupke, Nabilla Nuril Kaunain , Rochelle Kennedy, Matthew Roy Kerr , Nicole J. Kester, Moritz Klaassen , Oliwia Anna Konecka, Ruby Krasnow , Rebekka Eila Kukowski , Abhishek Kumar , Rowan Kuminski , Kuzey Soylu, Lucrezia Laccetti, Malgorzata Lagisz , Hooman Latifi, Nicolas Lecomte, Keshav D. Luchmun, Agathe Lévêque , Alexandra Markitantova , Benjamin Michael Marshall , Esteban Menares-Barraza, Daan Mertens , Geoffrey Mesbahi , Jennifer Meyer, Joseph Millard , Luis M. Montilla , Bruno Moreira , Albert Morera , Gopal Murali, Marcella P. Murray, Frederik Märker , Kaushalya Nagahawatte , Claire Louisa Narraway , Holly Niven , Alivia Grace Nytko , Bettina Ohse , Stuart Patterson , Helen R P Phillips , Ryan Pienaar , Pietro Pollo, Ángel Ponce , Lucas M.V. Porto, Elizabeth Preston , Clemence Prieul , Alona Prylutska , Oleh Prylutskyi , Klara Radman-Daw, Aina Matthieu Raharison , Rachana Rao , Freya Rebecca Read , Sydne Record, William Alexander Gwyn Rees , Richard Reeve, Harriet Rhodes, Camila Rocabado , Anna Rouviere , Anna Rönnfeldt , Alban Sagouis , Sailee Sakhalkar , Gabriel S. Santos, Abdus Shakur Mohammad , Rebecca Shaw , Dominika Siegieda , Lucia Šmídova, Benno I Simmons, Hannah G. Sisley, Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar , Fernando Gonzalez Taboada , Nigel Gareth Taylor , Hannah Rosemary Teague , Karthik Thrikkadeeri , Viktoria Lyanh Thuroczy , Alexa C Varah , K. L. Vinay, Cecylia M. Watrobska , Zach Benjamin Williams , Saras Mei Windecker 

1. Data- and code-archiving are important components of open science, as both make research more transparent, reproducible, accountable, and credible, allowing future researchers to build on previous work. Despite progress in implementing data- and code-archiving policies in journals publishing ecology and evolution research, issues remain. To be more useful to future researchers, archived data and code must not only be archived, but also meet good practice standards.
2. We collected data from 1,861 papers published between 2017 and 2024 in the seven British Ecological Society (BES) journals, during a hackathon event. We systematically checked associated data and/or code, metadata, help files and annotations to assess archiving practices. We determined if and where data and code files were archived, whether they could be located, downloaded, and opened, and whether they had associated READMEs, digital object identifiers (DOI) and licenses. We also recorded the file extensions used to save data/code files, and which programming languages code was written in.
3. 93% of the 1,861 papers we examined used data and ~90% used code. While 97% of the 1,735 papers that used data also archived it, only 35% of the 1,670 papers that used code also archived code. Over 85% of archived data and code could be located, downloaded, and opened. Reusability, however, was more limited; around a third of papers did not have a README or similar to explain their data/code files, and the quality of READMEs varied substantially.
4. We recommend that researchers archive their code, and that archived code be explicitly mentioned in the Data (or Code) Availability statement. We also encourage researchers to provide more accessible and informative READMEs for data and code. To help achieve these recommendations, we advocate that journals employ Data/Code editors to review data and code quality, research institutions deliver more training in open science practices, and funding bodies set clear expectations on open data and code practices.