Data sharing practices in high-impact rehabilitation journals.

Area of Science:

• Rehabilitation research
• Clinical trials
• Data science

Background:

• Rising demand for rehabilitation services due to aging populations and chronic conditions.
• Increasing emphasis on research transparency and reproducibility through data sharing.
• Limited data sharing in clinical research, particularly within rehabilitation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify barriers to data sharing in rehabilitation research.
• To guide future policies for standardizing data sharing statements (DSS).
• To assess the implementation and effectiveness of DSS in rehabilitation studies.

Main Methods:

• PubMed/MEDLINE search of clinical studies in top rehabilitation journals.
• Extraction of data sharing statements (DSS) and study characteristics.
• Hierarchical logistic regression, thematic analysis, and author email verification of DSS adherence.

Main Results:

• Only 25.5% of studies included a DSS, with significant variation across journals (99% vs. 5%).
• Most DSS designated a 'gatekeeper' for data requests.
• Only 22.7% of authors adhered to their stated DSS.

Conclusions:

• Substantial variation and inconsistency in DSS implementation across rehabilitation journals.
• A significant gap exists between stated data sharing intentions and actual author follow-through.
• Need for stronger accountability mechanisms, standardization of DSS, and consideration of data repositories, potentially guided by the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) framework.