What Constitutes Peer Review of Data: A survey of published peer review guidelines

TL;DR

This study surveys peer review guidelines of 39 data-focused journals to identify common criteria and compare current practices with proposed standards from 2012.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of existing peer review policies for data papers and highlights gaps between current practices and proposed criteria.

Findings

Most journals emphasize data quality and transparency.

Few journals explicitly mention reproducibility or data sharing standards.

There is inconsistency in peer review criteria across journals.

Abstract

Since a number of journals specifically focus on the review and publication of data sets, reviewing their policies seems an appropriate place to start in assessing what existing practice looks like in the 'real world' of reviewing and publishing data. This article outlines a study of the publicly available peer review policies of 39 scientific publications that publish data papers to discern which criteria are most and least frequently referenced. It also compares current practice with proposed criteria published in 2012.