Care to Share? Investigating Determinants of Code Sharing Behavior in the Social Sciences

Transparency and peer control are widely regarded as cornerstones of good scientific practice and are deemed crucial for the successful advancement of the scientific endeavor. Still, code/syntax sharing that allows the reproduction or replication of findings seems to be the exception rather than the rule among social scientists. This project deploys an experimental design to investigate the determinants of authors' willingness to share research code for published results. Varying the wording of an e-mailed code request, we will contact 1207 authors who published articles based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS) between 2015 and 2020. This will enable us not only to estimate aggregate levels of code sharing in the social sciences but also to tease out specific factors that increase or inhibit authors' willingness to share.