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Is it common practice to make data and code available only after manuscript acceptance in academic publishing?

Basically, I intend to provide a link to an OSF repo for my data and code, but leave it empty and only upload the necessary material after the journal accepted my publication. Describing it as:

All data and code will be publicly available on the Open Science Framework repo (link) after acceptance.

Is this acceptable for journals (especially top tier ones)? Are there any downsides to this?

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The question you're really asking is: "Do reviewers actually care about data and code being distributed with papers?". If I saw a "promise" to distribute those kinds of resources as a reviewer, I'd understand that those resources will not be distributed if I give a positive review. The promise is immaterial to this assessment-- the content is simply missing.

Not including essential data is quite a risk, I think. I've seldom heard of this being omitted. Code seems more variable by field.

You don't say exactly why you want to hold back this data and code. Perhaps you're paranoid about plagiarism, but that's deeply unlikely to happen via reviews at a reputable journal.

Perhaps you're worried that your code isn't currently as presentable as you'd like it to be, but don't want improvements to hold up starting the review process. My recommendation there: Make a "frozen" version of your code and data that you won't be modifying during the review, then send it off. Make any improvements you'd like in a different instance of the project, and you can link to this software in the final paper version if it's accepted. If you don't want the versions you give to reviewers distributed widely, host them via some reasonably private hosting service and maybe mention this wish in your cover letter with the submission. If you're a field which does double-blind submissions, perhaps you can distribute a copy to the appropriate editor for them to anonymize when they allow reviewers access.

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    "essential data is quite a risk, I think. I've seldom heard of this being omitted." What field are you writing from? Commented Jun 18 at 13:23
  • Ok I didn't expect this to be this vital for the reviewers as the majority of studies in my field don't even publish their data, let alone their code. I am now leaning towards sharing everything in the submission as I have come up with some code templates that will be useful in the field. However, I am unfortunately a bit paranoid, mostly because I don't know how many times this submission will change hand before it is finally accepted somewhere given how much I worked on this project. Commented Jun 19 at 2:35
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    @AzorAhai-him- Computational math, blends into machine learning/robotics/bio imaging from time to time. I'm maybe being a bit glib, but it does seem to me like omitting data is considered increasingly less acceptable in recent years.
    – user176372
    Commented Jun 19 at 2:50
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    @The_old_man Maybe the data isn't considered essential in your field! But if you think it's important and intend to distribute it, what's a few extra reviewers receiving it to you? If you want to be particularly careful with it, find a distribution system that lets you stop distributing, e.g. via a particular link, if the paper gets rejected.
    – user176372
    Commented Jun 19 at 2:54
  • @user176372 Thats an excellent suggestion! Thanks! Commented Jun 19 at 2:55

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