jop-replication-and-data-policy

Replication & Data Policy (jop-replication-and-data-policy)

This is JOP's signature skill. JOP does not merely request a deposit — acceptance is contingent on replicability. A JOP replication analyst, assigned at conditional acceptance, assesses your materials before publication, and manuscripts that are not replicable are rejected. Build the package as you analyze, not at acceptance.

When to trigger

• Building the replication / data-access package (start during analysis)
• A manuscript reached conditional acceptance and a replication analyst was assigned
• Data cannot be fully shared (privacy, ethics, legal/provider restrictions) and you need the path
• Any empirical, simulation-based, or formal-theoretical paper headed for JOP

What JOP requires (verify current wording on the policy page)

1. Replicability-contingent acceptance. It is JOP policy to publish a paper only if the data are accessible, the analyses fully documented, and the empirical findings reproducible. The conditional accept is conditional on passing this check.
2. The JOP replication analyst. At conditional acceptance, a JOP analyst is assigned and initially assesses replicability. This is an in-house JOP check — distinct from APSR's editorial-office reproduction and AJPS's external third-party verifier. Treat it as a real gate.
3. Deposit to the JOP Dataverse. Materials are uploaded to The Journal of Politics Dataverse on Harvard Dataverse as a single .zip file, with permanent DOIs, and made publicly available at the time of publication.
4. The four required items. A readme (lists/describes every file, plus operating system and software version), the dataset(s) (all variables used to produce every figure, table, and quantitative result), a codebook (names and defines every variable), and the code.

When data cannot be shared (access path)

• Explain why the data cannot be shared (ethics, privacy, or provider/legal restriction).
• Give README instructions on exactly how others can obtain the data (access process, contact).
• Where possible, provide synthetic or simulated data so the code can be exercised end-to-end.

Build-as-you-go checklist

• One master script regenerates every table, figure, and reported number from raw/constructed data
• readme documents every file, the OS, and exact software/package versions
• Codebook names and defines every variable used in the analysis
• Seeds set and reported for every stochastic step
• Exhibit/number-in-text values match the package output exactly
• Everything bundled as a single .zip ready for the JOP Dataverse
• Restricted data: explanation + access instructions + synthetic data where feasible

Anti-patterns

• Treating the deposit as a post-acceptance afterthought (it gates publication; the analyst re-checks)
• Depositing code that does not reproduce the printed tables/figures (non-replicable → rejected)
• A personal URL or generic cloud link instead of the JOP Dataverse
• Missing the codebook or version/OS info the readme must contain
• Claiming data are restricted without an access path or synthetic substitute

What the analyst checks (failure-mode table)

The JOP analyst's re-run is mechanical: it either regenerates your printed numbers or it does not. Close each common failure before conditional acceptance.

Failure the analyst will hit	Close it before deposit
Script errors on a clean machine	Master script, relative paths, fresh-clone test
Numbers drift from the printed table	Regenerate every exhibit from code; re-run end to end
Stochastic result will not reproduce	Set and report a seed for every random step

Worked micro-example (illustrative)

The AVR-turnout author reaches conditional acceptance and the analyst runs the .zip. On a fresh clone the master script fails because the working directory was hard-coded — tested only on the author's machine. After a relative-path fix it runs, but the turnout estimate prints as +1.79 against the paper's +1.8, a rounding mismatch. The author aligns the table to the script's value, confirms the seed reproduces the bootstrap CI, and the re-run matches the printed page.

Analyst pushback patterns and the JOP fix

• "Your code does not run on my machine." Test from a fresh clone with no local state, use relative paths, and pin software and package versions in the readme.
• "Confirm the data are restricted as claimed." Confirm the journal's current sharing expectations against the policy page before relying on a restricted-data path.

Output format

【Repository】JOP Dataverse (Harvard) — single .zip staged? [Y/N]
【Reproduces everything?】master script re-runs all results locally? [Y/N]
【Four items】readme + dataset(s) + codebook + code present? [Y/N]
【Versions + seeds】OS/software recorded, seeds set? [Y/N]
【Restricted data?】explanation + access path + synthetic data?
【Next】jop-review-process

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — reproducibility tooling and qualitative-transparency options (QDR)
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — JOP data-replication policy, replication analyst, JOP Dataverse