A collaborative group of data editors from major journals working to improve transparency and reproducibility.
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
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:
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.
References
Data and Code Availability Standard
Miklós Koren, Marie Connolly, Joan Lull, and 1 more author
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.
@techreport{koren2022,abstract={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.},author={Koren, Miklós and Connolly, Marie and Lull, Joan and Vilhuber, Lars},copyright={Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, Open Access},doi={10.5281/ZENODO.7436134},institution={Social Science Data Editors},language={en},month=dec,note={Version Number: 1.0},title={Data and {Code} {Availability} {Standard}},url={https://zenodo.org/record/7436134},urldate={2025-02-08},year={2022},month_numeric={12}}
A template README for social science replication packages
Lars Vilhuber, Marie Connolly, Miklós Koren, and 2 more authors
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.
@techreport{templateREADMEv1.1,abstract={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.},author={Vilhuber, Lars and Connolly, Marie and Koren, Miklós and Llull, Joan and Morrow, Peter},copyright={Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International, Open Access},institution={Zenodo},month=nov,number={v1.1.0},title={A template {README} for social science replication packages},url={https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7293838},urldate={2023-05-17},year={2022},month_numeric={11}}
A template README for social science replication packages
Lars Vilhuber, Marie Connolly, Miklós Koren, and 2 more authors
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.
@techreport{templateREADMEv1.0,abstract={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.},author={Vilhuber, Lars and Connolly, Marie and Koren, Miklós and Llull, Joan and Morrow, Peter},copyright={Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International, Open Access},doi={10.5281/ZENODO.4319999},institution={Zenodo},language={en},month=dec,note={Version Number: v1.0.0},title={A template {README} for social science replication packages},url={https://zenodo.org/record/4319999},urldate={2021-04-01},year={2020},month_numeric={12}}
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