“Because It Is the Right Thing to Do”: Taking Stock of the Peer Reviewers’ Openness Initiative

The Peer Reviewers’ Openness (PRO) Initiative promotes the sharing of data and code. PRO signatories pledge to provide a full review only for manuscripts that publicly share data and code, or include a justification why sharing is not possible. Since the punitive element of this approach attracted criticism, we conducted a survey to assess signatories’ experiences with PRO. Contrary to the criticism, the reported experiences were predominantly positive, and 92% (117/127) of the signatories indicated that they would sign the initiative again today. Only 19 out of 127 respondents (15%) experienced negative reactions. Almost 50 respondents suggested ways in which PRO could be improved. We conclude that, from the signatories’ perspective, the benefits of the PRO initiative outweigh its drawbacks.