Who Funds Open Data Sharing? Analysis of data availability statements in biomedical publications

Area of Science:

• Biomedical research
• Open science
• Data sharing

Background:

• Open data sharing is increasingly mandated by funders, journals, and institutions.
• Measuring compliance at scale remains a significant challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze large-scale open data sharing compliance in biomedical research.
• To establish an empirical baseline for future policy evaluation.

Main Methods:

• Analyzed 951,949 open access articles (Jan 2024 - Jun 2025) using a dual-source pipeline (PDF text extraction and PMC XML).
• Employed algorithmic detection of data sharing statements (oddpub v7.2.3).
• Integrated funder, journal, and institutional metadata from OpenAlex.

Main Results:

• Overall open data rate was 8.7%, increasing to 11.7% for funder-linked articles.
• Observed rates varied tenfold, with top journals showing up to 92.9% (corrected).
• PDF-based detection identified 52% more data sharing statements than XML-based methods.

Conclusions:

• Current open data sharing rates are significantly below universal compliance.
• Rates differ markedly across funders and journals, indicating ecosystem-specific challenges.
• Results provide a baseline for assessing the impact of future open data policies.