Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT)

Definition: Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT) is an initiative aimed at increasing data access and research transparency in the social sciences. It is a multi-epistemic and multi-method initiative, created in 2014 by the Council of the American Political Science Association (APSA), to bolster the rigor of empirical social inquiry. In addition to other activities, DA-RT developed the Journal Editors’ Transparency Statement (JETS), which requires subscribing journals to (a) making relevant data publicly available if the study is published, (b) following a strict data citation policy, (c) transparently describing the analytical procedures and, if possible, providing public access to analytical code, and (d) updating their journal style guides, codes of ethics to include improved data access and research transparency requirements.