Read the Effing Editorial Guidelines

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Looks like Eli's guess was right. Steve McIntyre writes in CA

I made a diligent effort at the time to get Science to require Briffa to disgorge his Yamal measurement data, but they refused. They argued that Osborn and Briffa 2006 did not use the Yamal measurement data, but only the chronology and I should contact the "original authors" for the measurement data. The source of the chronology was, of course, Briffa 2000. I wrote Tim Osborn and asked him for the data and he said that he didn't have it. So I wrote Keith Briffa and he stonewalled me. I wrote back to Science rather crossly about the nonsense.

Parsing this a little bit, Science agrees with Eli that the "measurement data" did not belong to Briffa. Steve still misses the point that the "measurement data" belonged to the Russians, and he continued to go after Briffa thinking that the "measurement data" referred to Briffa's reconstruction. He either doesn't get it or doesn't want to get it.

More: As pointed to by dhogaza on Deltoid, details of Steve's fishing expeditions in the land of proxy including this reply from Briffa:

Steve these data were produced by Swedish and Russian colleagues - will pass on your message to them]
cheers, Keith

Rabett Run, where you read it before they admit it.
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Stevereno's beating on Keith Briffa has gone nuclear hitting the major papers as well as the blogs. There are two legs upon which McIntyre's stands. Both are rather clayish.

First, that Briffa by publishing on the Yamal tree ring record had an obligation to make the data set available to all given the editorial guidelines of the journals.

Second, that Briffa used an inappropriately small number of living tree-ring cores from Yamal to calibrate the tree-ring proxy as evidence of which McIntyre uses a larger set of 34 cores taken from the same area taken by Schweingrubber.

The Capitalist Imperialist Pig has a pretty good take on the second issue for dummies (moi), less some important details we will discuss here tomorrow.

Briffa published three papers on the Yamal cores,

• Briffa, K. R. 2000. Annual climate variability in the Holocene: interpreting the message of ancient trees. Quaternary Science Reviews 19:87-105.
• Briffa, K. R., and T. J. Osborn. 2002. Paleoclimate - Blowing hot and cold. Science 295:2227-2228.
• Briffa, K. R., V. V. Shishov, T. M. Melvin, E. A. Vaganov, H. Grudd, R. M. Hantemirov, M. Eronen, and M. M. Naurzbaev. 2008. Trends in recent temperature and radial tree growth spanning 2000 years across northwest Eurasia. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 363:2271-2284.

In a reasonably short time after the third paper was published (a year or so) the data became publicly available. In this case one of the authors (or more) was part of the group that gathered the tree-ring cores.

As Eli has been pointing out, the data set DID NOT BELONG to Briffa, it belonged to the Russians, Hantemirov and Shiyatov, so Briffa did not have the right to convey it to McIntyre, no matter what. Whether McIntyre realized this is not clear, but he sure should have if he read the papers which explicitly describe the source of the data.

Eli inquired over at Climate Audit. The response was interesting. Mostly misdirection, but Mr. Pete asked good questions in return

How does your perspective align with the journal data disclosure policies?

Do you believe journal policies should be ignored, or do you believe Briffa was wrong to be in noncompliance until this year?

The Rabett will try, as ever, to be a helpful little bunny. However first, he will point out that the silence from the concerned party is insightful.

Off to the Editorial Guidelines. For Quaternary Science Reviews we have

Data Access and Retention Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data (consistent with the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases), if practicable, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.

The ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases makes an important distinction. Well, first dear hares, you have to know who they are, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM). Their concern is more to protect their interests in scientific and technical databases and much less in Steve McIntyre having access to the Yamal tree ring data.

There is considerable controversy in the scholarly community about ‘ownership’ of and access to data, some of which arises because of the difficulty in distinguishing between information products created for the specific display and retrieval of data (‘databases’) and sets or collections of raw relevant data captured in the course of research or other efforts (‘data sets’). Another point of difficulty is that in many cases data sets or even smaller sub-sets of data are also provided as an electronic adjunct to a paper submitted to a scholarly journal, either for online publication or simply to allow the referees to verify the conclusions.

We believe that, as a general principle, data sets, the raw data outputs of research, and sets or sub-sets of that data which are submitted with a paper to a journal, should wherever possible be made freely accessible to other scholars. We believe that the best practice for scholarly journal publishers is to separate supporting data from the article itself, and not to require any transfer of or ownership in such data or data sets as a condition of publication of the article in question. Further, we believe that when articles are published that have associated data files, it would be highly desirable, whenever feasible, to provide free access to that data, immediately or shortly after publication, whether the data is hosted on the publisher’s own site or elsewhere (even when the article itself is published under a business model which does not make it immediately free to all).

Still, a good distinction. The data set5 did not belong to Briffa, he had only been granted access by the owners, Hantemirov and Shiyatov. So the question is did McIntyre write to them and if so what response did he get. In any case Briffa is not responsible for the Russians use or sharing of their data set.

Science says

Data availability After publication, all data necessary to understand, assess, and extend the conclusions of the manuscript must be available to any reader of Science. We recognize that discipline-specific conventions or special circumstances may occasionally apply, and we will consider these in negotiating compliance with requests. Any concerns about your ability to meet Science's requirements must be disclosed and discussed with an editor. For further information about accessibility of data and materials, see the following resources.

• Cech, T. R. (2003), Sharing Publication-Related Data and Materials: Responsibilities of Authorship in the Life Sciences.
• American Psychological Association, Responsible Conduct of Research: Data Sharing and Data Archiving.
• National Science Foundation Policy on Data Sharing [PDF].

The Editors of Science clearly are willing to negotiate any questions. Eli asks if Steve McIntyre addressed them or only Briffa or Hantemirov and Shiyatov and if he did what reply he received. However the NSF rules make an important point

36. Sharing of Findings, Data, and Other Research Products

a. NSF expects significant findings from research and education activities it supports to be promptly submitted for publication, with authorship that accurately reflects the contributions of those involved. It expects investigators to share with other researchers, at no more than incremental cost and within a reasonable time, the data, samples, physical collections and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of the work. It also encourages awardees to share software and inventions or otherwise act to make the innovations they embody widely useful and
usable.

b. Adjustments and, where essential, exceptions may be allowed to safeguard the rights of individuals and subjects, the validity of results, or the integrity of collections or to accommodate legitimate interests of investigators.

Briffa and Briffa and Osborn did not create or gather the Yamal tree ring data set, a point Eli has been making throughout. This distinction between data set and the data resulting from the data set is crucial. McIntyre has already shown that Briffa disclosed enough information about his methods for McIntyre to replicate the results, so clearly the disclosure met the journal policy. It is also clear that the data set was something loaned to Briffa for his use alone.

So, in sumary, Mr. Pete, Eli would say that his perspective aligns pretty well with the publication policies of the journals. Data sets are owned by those that created them and they have the right to first use. They can share them with others and do not have to share them with everyone until completely published. People who are loaned data sets, do not have the right to post them on the village wall.

Now we come to the fun part. Speculation. It looks pretty clear at this point that McIntyre hammered on Briffa for the data set. It would be interesting to know if Briffa replied (specifically if he replied, go ask Hantemirov and Shiyatov), but it does not take too much imagination to think that Steve was his usual charming self, and got another go away.

Eli doesn't believe that Briffa ignored or "broke" with the publication policy of Quatenary Science Review, and, at worst, took the Science policy to the limit, but was probably provoked by a well known boor. The key to all this is what McIntyre did, and the only ones who know that are McIntyre, Briffa and Hantemirov and Shiyatov, but one can speculate, and silence talks (at least for a while....yes, Eli is trolling. Next question)

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