Social Science Data Editors

The Social Science Data Editors is an informal collaboration of data editors from leading social science journals across multiple disciplines including economics, political science, sociology, and related fields. The group works to develop shared standards, tools, and best practices for data and code availability policies.

Mission

The Social Science Data Editors group aims to:

Develop and maintain common standards for data and code availability
Share tools and resources for data editors and authors
Promote transparency and reproducibility in social science research
Facilitate communication and collaboration among data editors across journals

Key Resources

Data and Code Availability Standard

The group has developed the Data and Code Availability Standard, a comprehensive framework that journals can adopt to ensure research transparency. See (Koren et al., 2022).

Template README

One of the most widely-used resources is the template README, which provides authors with a standardized format for documenting their replication packages. This template has been adopted by numerous journals and helps ensure that replication packages contain all necessary information for reproduction. See (Vilhuber et al., 2022; Vilhuber et al., 2020)

Guidance and Resources

The Social Science Data Editors website hosts a wealth of resources on the group’s website.

Member Journals

The Social Science Data Editors group includes data editors from journals such as:

American Economic Association journals (AEA)
Econometric Society journals
Canadian Journal of Economics (CJE)
Economic Journal
Journal of the European Economic Association (JEEA)
Review of Economic Studies (RESTUD)
And several others

Not all are equally active, but there is an active Slack channel, and monthly meetings.

Collaboration and Development

Much of the collaborative work takes place in public GitHub repositories, promoting transparency and community contributions:

Social Science Data Editors GitHub Organization

The group regularly meets to discuss emerging challenges, share experiences, and coordinate on new initiatives. This collaborative approach has significantly advanced the state of reproducibility practices in social science research.

DCAS is a standard for sharing research code and data, endorsed by leading journals in social sciences. It is maintained by the Social Science Data Editors.

The typical README in social science journals serves the purpose of guiding a reader through the available material and a route to replicating the results in the research paper, including the description of the origins of data and/or description of programs. As such, a good README file should first provide a brief overview of the available material and a brief guide as to how to proceed from beginning to end, before then diving into the specifics. These template files structure such a README in a way that is compliant with the typical data and code workflow in the social sciences.