IMPROVING DATA AVAILABILITY: A NEW SMJ INITIATIVE

Sendil Ethiraj
London Business School

Alfonso Gambardella
Bocconi University

Constance E. Helfat
Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
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In the pages of this journal, the Co-editors have previously written about the

importance of cumulative research, including the benefits of replication studies

(Bettis, Ethiraj, Gambardella, Helfat, and Mitchell, 2016; Ethiraj, Gambardella, and

Helfat, 2016). It goes without saying that the availability of data facilitates the

replication of prior studies, including exact replications as well as quasi-replications

that use different data than the original studies. However, data availability in

strategic management, and in the management fields more generally, has other

important benefits in promoting the cumulativeness of research-based knowledge.

In the field of strategic management, researchers often go to great lengths to collect

unique data that form the backbone of much of our research. Scholars who wish to

build on prior research generally lack access to these sorts of previously-collected

data, and therefore have to reinvent the wheel (so to speak) by collecting new, and

often qualitatively different, data. This impedes the cumulativeness of our research.

In an effort to improve matters, we are introducing a new SMJ initiative that seeks to

improve the availability of data used in prior research while still providing

incentives for researchers to collect these data in the first place.

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not
been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which
may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this
article as doi: 10.1002/smj.2690

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 There are many ways to improve the availability of data. A number of journals in

economics and political science require that authors of empirical work submit their

data and code at the time of article publication or paper submission, with
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exemptions granted for proprietary and legally restricted data (Christensen and

Miguel, 2017). Compelling the disclosure of data, however, can impede research

progress by reducing incentives for scholars to collect and organize unique data in

the first place (Christensen and Miguel, 2017). We believe that this problem is

especially relevant to strategic management, where many studies rely on data

specific to individual firms, industries, and geographic areas. Some of these data are

proprietary or legally restricted, but even for data that are not, researchers often

spend an extensive amount of time collecting data (especially data that is not easily

available from large electronic data bases), organizing it, and cleaning it to identify

and correct errors.

Given the amount of work involved in creating a usable dataset, authors often plan a

program of more than one research paper from a dataset. Compelling the disclosure

of data would make it more difficult to execute such research programs because

other researchers would have ready access to the same data, and authors who

collected the data in question would risk being scooped. One solution to this

problem might be to place an embargo on access to the data by other researchers

for a specified period of time. However, the appropriate amount of time during

which the original authors should have exclusive access to their data is unclear, and

crafting such policies can result in complex and difficult-to-implement formulas,

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 such as those that take into account not only the amount of time since publication

but also the amount of time involved in collecting the data (Christensen and Miguel,

2017). These types of policies also place journals in the position of policing
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disclosure of embargoed data.

In light of the disadvantages of compelling the disclosure of data, we are taking

steps to instead to encourage greater voluntary data disclosure. First, we plan to

approach authors of well-cited articles in SMJ published between five and ten years

ago, and ask them to contribute their data (and code, if available) along with brief

documentation of the variables.1 We are making the FIVES Project data repository

(five.dartmouth.edu) available to either store the data and documentation or

provide links on the FIVES website to the data and documentation on the authors

own or other websites.2 In this way, authors whose work has had a significant

impact can give back to our field after several years have passed and they have had

an opportunity to pursue follow-on work using their data.3 Secondly, to encourage

authors to disclose their data upon the publication of an article, we are introducing

badges that denote articles for which the data and documentation have been made

freely available either through the FIVES Project or on the authors own or other

websites. 4 These badges recognize authors for their work in promoting the

1 We are grateful to Mauro Guillen for suggesting this idea and the rationale behind it.
2 This data repository, run by one of the SMJ co-editors, was previously called the FIVE Project. FIVES
stands for Firm and Industry eVolution, Entrepreneurship, and Strategy.
3 We are not approaching authors of work published more than ten years ago because experience

with the FIVES Project has shown that older data are difficult for authors to retrieve in usable form.
4 This idea comes from the journal Psychological Science, which also denotes such articles with
badges.

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 cumulativeness of research knowledge through data availability. Finally, we are

open to the possibility of publishing short articles in which authors discuss the data

collection and organizing process for unique data sets, as long as the articles contain
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important lessons for all researchers and the authors make their data and

documentation freely available immediately. Interested authors should send

inquiries directly to the SMJ Co-editors.

REFERENCES

Bettis RA, Ethiraj S, Gambardella A, Helfat C, Mitchell W. 2016. Creating repeatable

cumulative knowledge in strategic management: A call for a broad and deep
conversation among authors, referees, and editors. Strategic Management Journal
37(2): 257-261.

Ethiraj SK, Gambardella A, Helfat CE. 2016. Replication in strategic management.

Strategic Management Journal 37(11): 2191-2192.

Christensen GS, Miguel E. 2017. Transparency, reproducibility, and the credibility of

economics research. Journal of Economic Literature, forthcoming.

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