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Lack of data availability is a concern

Posted by jeisen on 09 Aug 2009 at 19:49 GMT

I am concerned about the availability of the data used in this paper. The authors state "The ranking data produced to support the discussed Principal Component Analysis is available upon request from the corresponding author with the exception of those that have been obtained under proprietary licenses." This concerns me for two reasons. 1. In this day and age, one should not have to request data from an author - it should be posted somewhere. 2. The ability for others to reproduce the work here is severely limited by the lack of access to the data obtained using proprietary licenses. While I understand why the authors might feel they have to do this, it would be useful to discuss in more detail what the reasons were for not releasing the data, since there may be those out there who could suggest ways to make the data available.

No competing interests declared.