Analysis of shared research data in Spanish scientific papers about COVID‐19: A first approach

During the coronavirus pandemic, changes in the way science is done and shared occurred, which motivates meta‐research to help understand science communication in crises and improve its effectiveness. The objective is to study how many Spanish scientific papers on COVID‐19 published during 2020 share their research data. Qualitative and descriptive study applying nine attributes: (a) availability, (b) accessibility, (c) format, (d) licensing, (e) linkage, (f) funding, (g) editorial policy, (h) content, and (i) statistics. We analyzed 1,340 papers, 1,173 (87.5%) did not have research data. A total of 12.5% share their research data of which 2.1% share their data in repositories, 5% share their data through a simple request, 0.2% do not have permission to share their data, and 5.2% share their data as supplementary material. There is a small percentage that shares their research data; however, it demonstrates the researchers' poor knowledge on how to properly share their research data and their lack of knowledge on what is research data.