Availability of Data and Computer Code for Published Papers

Authors of accepted papers are required, before final acceptance, to provide to RED the data and computer code used in generating the results of the paper. It should be sufficient to enable other researchers to replicate the results of the paper.

For papers that use empirical data, authors have to provide the final data sets used to obtain the empirical results of the paper, as well as the computer code(s) used to manipulate the data. A readme.txt file should be included describing how the program(s) can be run. If the final data set was created from other sources, a description of how the final data set was created from the previous sources is also required. This description should be sufficiently detailed to allow other researchers to replicate the construction of the final data set. If possible, the original data should also be provided.

For papers that contain numerical results authors have to provide the final programs that generate the results in the paper, plus a readme.txt file describing how the programs can be run, which program generates what results, etc. The results used for the summary statistics and/or graphs should be included.

Authors should notify by email to Christian Zimmermann. All relevant files should be attached to the email (if files are small) or provided (temporarily) on a website, Dropbox, Google Drive, or a similar service, with the following details:

  1. Title of paper;
  2. Manuscript number;
  3. Name of all authors;
  4. Name of RED editor in charge;
  5. readme.txt file describing all other files and how to run them. In particular, it needs to include:
    1. Software and operating system used;
    2. If a particular computing setup was used (parallel, cluster, etc.), explain it;
    3. The order in which the programs need to run;
    4. Expected computation time, if necessary for each part;
    5. If random numbers are used, the seed needs to be specified, as well as the random number generator.
  6. If an online appendix is required by the editor, join that separately.

If files are packaged, if should be with an open standard (.zip, .gz, .gzip). File names should not contain spaces, for compatibility across operating and file systems. Readme files in PDF or Word will be converted to plain text, so you may just use plain text to start with.

All files will be made available on the RED website and will be indexed on RePEc. They are also backed up for long-term storage. Christian Zimmermann will notify the editor once all requirements are met, with CC: to the corresponding author.

Any exemption to this policy has to be approved, at the time of submission, by the coordinating editor of RED.