By name: ajs-data-and-transparency description: Use when handling data documentation, sharing, and confidentiality for an American Journal of Sociology (AJS) manuscript. AJS does NOT advertise a mandatory editor-verified replication package like APSR/AJPS; document thoroughly, share what you ethically can, and verify the current policy. Prepares documentation; it does not over-state requirements.
Data & Transparency (ajs-data-and-transparency)
AJS's public author guidance is less prescriptive on mandatory replication than APSR or AJPS: there is no advertised editor-verified reproducibility deposit comparable to a Dataverse verification step. Do not assert a requirement that AJS does not state. The right posture is: document thoroughly, share what you ethically can, protect informants, and confirm the current supplementary-materials / data-availability policy on the live AJS pages before submission.
When to trigger
- Preparing data documentation and any supplementary materials
- Deciding what can be shared given confidentiality, IRB, or proprietary constraints
- Documenting comparative-historical or ethnographic evidence so claims are checkable
- A reader asked how others could verify or build on the analysis
What AJS does / does not require (verify current wording)
- No advertised mandatory, editor-verified replication package. Treat reproducibility as good practice you choose, not a stated gate; live-check current data-availability or supplementary policy before submission.
- Originality / overlap: if the paper overlaps your prior published or under-review work, prepare a brief originality statement saying what is new here.
- Ethics: concurrent submission to more than one journal violates the Press's ethical standards and leads to rejection.
Good practice (do this even though AJS may not pre-verify)
- Document provenance and construction. A README/codebook describing sources, sample construction, variable definitions, and analysis steps so the work is checkable.
- Quantitative: keep a master script + pinned versions + seeds; be ready to share code even when restricted data cannot be redistributed (give an access path).
- Comparative-historical: cite primary sources precisely enough that the evidentiary trail can be followed.
- Ethnographic / interview: protect informants — anonymize, aggregate, or restrict sensitive material; a controlled-access repository (e.g., QDR) where appropriate; share what supports the claims without exposing participants.
- Confidentiality first. Human-subjects protection overrides sharing; state clearly when and why data cannot be shared, and what can (synthetic data, code, documentation).
Transparency posture by tradition (an AJS decision table)
AJS is method-pluralist, so "transparency" means a checkable evidentiary trail proportionate to the claim, not a one-size deposit. Confirm current policy wording against the journal's current submission guidelines.
| Tradition | Minimum documentation | Substitute when full sharing is impossible |
|---|---|---|
| Quantitative (public data) | master script, codebook, pinned versions, seeds | post code + derivation steps |
| Quantitative (restricted) | as above + an access path | synthetic data + application instructions |
| Comparative-historical | primary-source citations, archive locators | a source appendix readers can retrieve |
| Ethnographic / interview | coding scheme, within-case sampling logic | aggregated excerpts; controlled-access deposit (QDR) |
| Network / computational | boundary rules, tie definitions, missingness | anonymized edgelist + generation code |
Calibration (where AJS sits, hedged)
AJS's craftsmanship culture means referees value a documentation trail that lets a skeptical reader follow the inference — even though AJS does not advertise an editor-verified replication gate the way some political-science journals do. Unlike a parsimony-first sibling that may lean on one mandatory deposit, at AJS the depth and checkability of the tradition-appropriate trail carry the day; treat thorough documentation as a craft choice, and confirm the live data-availability policy before submission.
Illustrative: a welfare-state study draws on three archives plus a restricted panel that cannot be redistributed. Applying the table, the author posts the script and codebook, adds a source appendix with exact archive locators (an illustrative ~140 primary sources), and supplies a synthetic panel plus data-access steps — documentation chosen to make the inference checkable, not overstated as an AJS-verified deposit.
Anti-patterns
- Over-stating AJS policy as a mandatory verified replication deposit (it does not advertise one)
- Promising open data that IRB / confidentiality will not allow
- No codebook or documentation, making the analysis uncheckable
- Exposing identifiable information about ethnographic informants
- Submitting elsewhere while under AJS review (violates the Press's ethical standards)
- Treating transparency as one fixed deposit rather than a tradition-appropriate evidentiary trail
Output format
【Sharing posture】what can be shared (data / code / docs / synthetic) and what cannot, and why
【Documentation】README/codebook + provenance + (quant) seeds/pinned versions? [Y/N]
【Confidentiality】informant/participant protection handled? [Y/N]
【Originality statement】prepared if overlap with prior work? [Y/N/NA]
【Policy check】current AJS data/supplementary policy confirmed on live page? [Y/N/live-check needed]
【Next】ajs-review-process
Supplementary resources
../../resources/external_tools.md— reproducibility tooling and controlled-access options (QDR)../../resources/official-source-map.md— AJS ethics / originality and the live-check boundary for data policy