Access to Archives of Scientific Psychology Data

The Archives of Scientific Psychology Review Committee is responsible for approving all research applications requesting access to the datasets stored at the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) in connection with articles published in Archives of Scientific Psychology (hereafter, Archives).

Authors whose manuscripts are accepted for publication in Archives deposit the data that underlie the analyses presented in their manuscripts to ICPSR. However, only those variables used in the analyses reported in the published article are initially made available to qualified next-users. Contact the Archives Review Committee to confirm the scope of the available data.

All data access requests related to Archive must be made directly to the Archives Review Committee at APA.

The following information is intended to assist investigators seeking access to the Archives data.

1. The Archives Review Committee receives and considers all requests to access the Archives data from ICPSR. If approved, access will be granted for 12 months (with data analysis and any resulting publication to be submitted within this time period). Access approval is renewable for a further 12-month period per project. Continued access for the same study beyond this time will require a new access request.

Fill out the Data Access Request Form (PDF, 157KB) to begin the application process. The form and related materials must be submitted via email together in a single package. This package should identify a single principal investigator who will serve as primary contact for the research team.

2. Ethical clearance from a properly constituted Ethics Institutional Review Board should be sought before making a request to the Archives Review Committee. A copy of the full application and corresponding clearance letter must be included with your Data Access Request Form.

3. Co-authorship requirement: As part of the Data Access Request Form, next-users of data must formally agree to offer co-authorship to the generator(s) of the data on any subsequent publications.

This stipulation is based on the APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct regarding publication credit, which states: "Principal authorship and other publication credits accurately reflect the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their relative status" (Section 8.12). It is the opinion of the Archives editors that designing and conducting the original data collection is a scientific contribution that cannot be exhausted after one use of the data; it resides in the data permanently.

4. Citation requirement: Regardless of whether the data generators agree to co-authorship, the next-users of data shared by authors of articles in Archives and deposited with APA at ICPSR must agree to properly acknowledge the original source of the data in any resulting publications or presentations.

In addition to data citation, the next-users are also encouraged to include the following statement in author acknowledgements (or other appropriate section of the publication):

Data analyzed for this study was originally submitted to the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR, http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/) in connection with a publication in Archives of Scientific Psychology, the open-access, open-data, and open-methods journal of the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/arc/).

The next-users will be contacted annually by the Archives Review Committee for an update on data use and references to any resulting publications.

5. As part of the Data Access Request Form, applicants must disclose funding sources.

6. Once the Archives Review Committee has considered the application, investigators will be informed of the Committee's decision by email. Upon the initial approval of the data access request, a letter from the prospective data user's host institution must be provided confirming the prospective user's full affiliation and good standing within the institution, as well as the institution's willingness to receive and store the data on the investigators' behalf.

This letter must be signed by the institution's main signing official (e.g., University Vice President for Research) and is a requirement for formalizing data access.

7. Following the receipt of all necessary documentation from the applicant's host institution and upon final review by the Archives Review Committee, APA will make arrangements with the research team's primary contact for the delivery of datasets.

8. Investigators must seek formal approval from the Archives Review Committee before instituting significant changes to the approved research proposal, undertaking subsequent studies, or conducting additional follow-up research using the Archives data stored at ICPSR.

9. Any deviations from the above must be approved in writing in each instance by the Archives Review Committee.