The spreadsheets in the present dataset (CSV format) include: the sources considered during the literature review stage of the Knowledge Exchange activity on publishing reproducible research outputs (KE-PRRO); and the thematic coding that has been applied to these sources. It should be noted that not all sources considered are available in the thematic coding file, due to copyright considerations (e.g. in cases where significant portions of a subscription-only article have been coded). The thematic coding has been applied by using NVivo, a professional qualitative analysis software, and then exported in spreadsheet form for public sharing. The findings of this analysis have been used to produce a slide deck, which is also available on Zenodo at: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4675457