Research Data Policy

Data Availability Statement:

Authors must include a Data Availability Statement in their manuscript, detailing where and how the data supporting the results reported in the study can be found and accessed, including a direct link to the data if the data are deposited and/or archived in a viable public repository/platform, if applicable. If supplementary material is provided, authors should specify this in the statement. By data, we mean the minimal dataset that would be necessary to interpret, replicate, and build upon the findings reported in the article. 

We acknowledge that there are situations where sharing research data publicly may not be feasible, particularly when it could compromise individual privacy. In such cases, authors should still indicate data availability in the manuscript, along with any stipulations for accessing the data.

Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

  • The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, accessible via [PERSISTENT LINK TO DATASETS].
  • The datasets utilized and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
  • All data associated with this study are incorporated within this published article [and its supplementary information files].
  • The datasets associated with the current study are not publicly accessible due to [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC], but are accessible from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
  • Data sharing is not relevant to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.
  • The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. However, the data can be obtained from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission from [third party name].

Data Accessibility and Format:

Data should be provided in a format that is widely accessible and easily readable by other researchers. Commonly used formats include CSV, Excel, and plain text files. If proprietary software is used, authors should ensure that data can be accessed and interpreted using widely available software tools. For example, the author(s) can include the code and a README in a file zipped together, and upload the .zip as a supporting file to the article.

Data Citation:

We also require that authors cite any publicly available data on which the conclusions of the paper rely in the manuscript. Data citations should include a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI) when possible and should ideally be included in the reference list. When citing datasets, adhere to journal style and include the minimum metadata DataCite recommends. Dataset identifiers, including DOIs, should be expressed as full URLs.