The following letter, signed by 20 former, present, and future presidents of the American Political Science Association, was sent on January 7, 2016, to the editors of each of the 27 journals that signed the Journal Editors Transparency Statement (JETS). The JETS statement, followed by the list of journals, can be accessed at http://www.dartstatement.org/#!blank/c22sl. The letter expresses concern about the language in the JETS statement and asks journal editors to clarify how their journals will interpret these policies, so that they promote the goals of data access and research transparency while recognizing the legitimate concerns of scholars whose work includes the creation of original data sets, whose work is partly or wholly qualitative or interpretive, or whose work requires protecting the rights and well-being of human subjects.
[Editor’s name, title, and journal name]
Dear [Editor of journal],
We write to you in your capacity as [title, e.g., Editor-in-Chief] of the [journal name].
We are impressed, but also concerned, that so many top political science journals have simultaneously adopted the JETS (Journal Editors Transparency Statement).
The commitments expressed in the JETS are a milestone in the long efforts to improve research transparency and facilitate replication in political science. Many of us have strongly supported these efforts. Indeed, APSA formally adopted a commitment to research transparency and data access in its Ethics Guidelines in 2012. We welcome the journals’ commitments to move towards concrete implementation of the broad policy statements. We appreciate your joining in this difficult task. As (in many cases) former editors, we are sympathetic to the labor involved.
Nonetheless, we are concerned that the adoption by so many journals of the abbreviated interpretation of the APSA Ethics Guidelines expressed in the JETS statement may have unanticipated negative consequences. We are especially concerned by the reactions of many of our colleagues, who perceive that the JETS policies will severely constrain their research. We fear that the statement, unless fully explained, will hinder the development of original data and research in our discipline. These concerns are not inconsistent with the views expressed in the Statement on the Data Access and Research Transparency Initiative of November 24, 2015, by the current president, president-elect, and immediate former president.
We would urge, therefore, that each journal publish a more nuanced statement of the implementation of transparency policies. Some journals have already published such detailed statements or moved in that direction. We applaud this and urge others to follow.
The JETS statement seems to us (a) alarmingly vague in its declaration that “all relevant analytic materials” should be made available; (b) flawed in neglecting the admonition in the APSA Ethics Guidelines that the creators of new data sets should have first access and a period of personal use before making them available; (c) insufficiently sensitive to the many complexities of non-quantitative data; and (d) regrettably silent on the rights and well-being of human subjects, including confidential informants. The complexities of non-quantitative data have been discussed in many places and further deliberation and development is underway. We hope that the more detailed and nuanced statements specific to your particular journals would address these and other issues, providing both guidance and reassurance to publishing scholars.
We especially hope that these statements would recognize the complex balance between providing enough material to clarify process and facilitate replication, on the one hand, while on the other still enabling original creators of new data sets to publish specific pieces of research from the data as at the same time that they develop other and/or more comprehensive analyses with some protection for originality.
We would also hope that the detailed policy statements would recognize the on-going, dynamic nature of the replication and transparency movement, especially in the areas of qualitative data, and stress openness to a variety of approaches to achieve the broader goals and avoid research-chilling costs.
We stress that we are signing this statement as individuals, not as representatives of the American Political Science Association.
All best,
Bing Powell
APSA President in 2011-2012
Joined by:
Sidney Verba, APSA President in 1994-1995
Arend Lijphart, APSA President in 1995-1996
M. Kent Jennings, APSA President in 1997-1998
Matthew Holden, Jr., APSA President in 1998-1999
Robert O. Keohane, APSA President in 1999-2000
Robert Jervis, APSA President in 2000-2001
Robert D. Putnam, APSA President in 2001-2002
Theda Skocpol, APSA President in 2002-2003
Margaret Levi, APSA President in 2004-2005
Robert Axelrod, APSA President in 2006-2007
Dianne Pinderhughes, APSA President in 2007-2008
Peter Katzenstein, APSA President in 2008-2009
Henry Brady, APSA President in 2009-2010
Carole Pateman, APSA President in 2010-2011
Jane Mansbridge, APSA President in 2012-2013
John Aldrich, APSA President in 2013-2014
Rodney E. Hero, APSA President in 2014-2015
Jennifer Hochschild, APSA President in 2015-2016
David A. Lake, APSA President-Elect.
Dear colleagues, I was alerted to the above message. I am
one of the editors who received the original email, and I have
responed to Prof. Powell with the following email on January 8,
2016. The address to which I refer in the last para can be found here:
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2014.17
Regards, Gerald Schneider (Editor, European Union Politics, co-Editor
International Interactions)
Dear colleague, thanks a lot for sharing the concerns of your
distinguished groups of signatories. We are of course aware at EUP of
the debate among APSA members and the different petitions and
counter-petitions. EUP has been a strong advocate of transparency
since the publication of its first issue in 2000. The replication and
transparency standards that we have implemented since then go well
beyond what is demanded in JETS. The entire discussion that is
currently going on in the United States strikes many of us in Europe
(and I note that many journals which have signed JETS are edited or
co-edited here) as being out-of-date and protectionist. The Journal of
Peace Research adopted such standards in the 1990s, and Political
Science Research and Methods and International Interactions were the
frontrunners in running independent replications of the findings
reported in tables and figures before the final acceptance of a piece
– a requirement that many other journals have now adopted, including EUP and AJPS.
We never experienced difficulties at EUP in asking authors of
non-quantitative articles to provide reasonable information on their
data gathering processes, we always accepted requests for the
non-publication of replication material if confidentialiy issues were
raised and did never require the authors to publish data that they did
not use for the reported analyses. Hence, I can simply not understand
why the concerns expressed by you and your colleagues still live on
despite the tremenduous advances political science has made in
communicating its achievements in a transparent fashion. We should be
proud about that, especially in light of the backwardness of other
social scientific disciplines in this regard.
It is with some hesitation that I also would like to point out that I
find your reference to the APSA Ethics Guideline a bit paternalistic.
I do not see why journals edited in Europe should be urged to consider
the rules of a professional organization based in the United States.
Let´s face it that our discipline has become a global enterprise (the
fact that APSR will be run by a team based in Europe is a recent
indication of this) and that we can only succeed in convincing a
global audience from the merits of our research if we do not shield it
from scrutiny and if we overcome the temptation to believe that only
certain universites, countries or continents produce quality research.
I hope that your distinguished colleagues note how much progress we
have made in improving the openness of our recruitment and in
fostering the transparency of the research process in Europe in recent
years. I am attaching my EPSA presidential address in which I discuss
some of these issues.
Sincerely, Gerald Schneider