Depositing Data in the AEA Data and Code Repository
The American Economic Association journals require authors to deposit data and materials with a community-recognized or general repositories. The AEA Data and Code Repository at ICPSR serves that purpose. Please see the AEA's Data and Code Availability Policy and data citation guidance at the Sample References page for more details. Authors are required to include a citation pointing to the deposit in the reference section of the final version of the article sent to the AEA. The openICPSR repository automatically generates a citation when the data are "published."
Deposits should include all data, annotated program code, command files, and documentation that is needed to replicate the findings from the authors' submitted article.
- Data should be comprehensively documented (see ICPSR's Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving, 6th Edition for guidance). The author is responsible for removing identifying information from the data to protect confidentiality. Neither the AEA nor ICPSR review submissions for disclosure risk.
- Program code and command files should be annotated to facilitate replication and ensure clear correspondence between code and figures, tables, and analyses in the published article.
- Authors retain ownership and copyright to the data and code. Authors are required to affirm that they have the right to publish and redistribute the material. However,
- ICPSR requires a license for distribution of data.
- An open license is required by the AEA, in order to allow others to re-use the data and code, in particular for replication. Authors can select from several license options, including CC-BY 4.0 for data and Modified BSD for software and code. If an author would like to use multiple licenses or create a customized license, she should select the "Other" license option and upload a LICENSE file alongside the data and documentation.
By depositing in the AEA Data and Code Repository, the depositors allow the AEA staff to add keywords and other metadata which are important for proper indexing in linking. Any other changes are subject to the license chosen for the materials.