A first look at Open Science Indicators for articles published in 2023

Written by Lauren Cadwallader, Lindsay Morton, and Iain Hrynaszkiewicz

This week, PLOS shares the latest update to our Open Science Indicators (OSIs) dataset. We’ve added an additional three months of data, bringing the data current through the end of the first quarter of this year. The complete dataset now covers the period from January 1 2019-March 31 2023.

About Open Science Indicators

Developed in partnership with DataSeer, Open Science indicators are a large public dataset—the latest version has data on 82,298 articles—that uses Natural Language Processing to identify and measure key Open Science practices in the published literature, including the entire PLOS corpus, plus a smaller comparator dataset drawn from PubMed Central. The current indicators include data sharing, code sharing, and preprint posting.

Download the dataset

Who are Open Science Indicators for?

PLOS initially created Open Science Indicators to help meet our own needs—to better understand researchers and their sharing practices, and how these differ across groups. An improved understanding of the communities we serve helps us to better support researchers, develop new solutions, and advance our mission of Openness.

By sharing the data openly, we hope to help meet the needs of individuals and organizations outside PLOS as well. So far, users of the dataset have included funders, institutions, academic librarians, and meta researchers. As of this writing, the dataset on Figshare has attracted over 5,600 views and more than 700 downloads and been cited in multiple scholarly preprints.

Let us know how you use the dataset, and what would be helpful to support you! If the data isn’t useful for you, we want to hear about that, too. Comment below, or email us at community (at) plos.org.

Open Science Indicators trends

In the first quarter of 2023 Open Science Indicator trends for PLOS articles have remained largely stable compared to the previous quarter and 2022 as a whole. Comparator rates are more varied, likely due to the smaller sample size, and show increases following a drop off at the end of last year across all indicators. 

Watch this space for further updates and analysis of the Open Science Indicators results!