Purpose: Many researchers in psychology have recently increased their commitment to open science, a key part of which is making data and analysis code open, so that other researchers can examine our work and use our data without needing to email us directly. Unfortunately, the default language provided by many departmental ethics committees can provide a stumbling block to such data sharing.
For instance, many of these boilerplate forms promise participants that their data will not be shared outside the research team, or only shared with competent researchers. This language is problematic for those of us who want to make our data open, because it seems to preclude posting even de-identified data on the open science framework or other data repositories. Having recently had to modify the language provided by my own department, and not finding any good templates for such language available, I’m posting this document in the hopes that it will aid others in making similar adjustments.