Joint Publisher Statement

PLOS, together with the Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Cell families of journals issued a joint statement that addresses a recently proposed rule from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

PLOS has always been a strong proponent of sharing data to improve the transparency of scientific research, but we recognize that some datasets cannot be made publicly available for ethical reasons. The EPA proposed rule is presented as informed by the journals’ policies. However, insisting on public availability of data would allow the EPA to exclude relevant data simply because it cannot be made publicly available. We believe this could prevent the use of relevant scientific evidence in the regulatory process.

You can read the joint statement here.

Citation

J. Berg, P. Campbell, V. Kiermer, N. Raikhel, D. Sweet, Science. 10.1126/science.aau0116 (2018).