Sharing underlying data for publications is considered good practice as it allows for the published results to be verified, and many academic journals already require authors to share their underlying data. It is, therefore, good practice to include a data availability statement in every published article.
A data availability statement serves to inform readers about the accessibility of research data that were used in the published article.
On the contrary, the data availability statement should not include information about data collection or analysis.
A data availability statement (DAS) should specify how to get access to the research data related to the reported study, including a direct link to the data, ideally using a persistent identifier. Unless it is necessary to restrict access to the data, the DAS should not include “data available upon request”.
In case the supporting data cannot be shared publicly or it is necessary to restrict access to the data, the DAS should explain why the data cannot be made available and specify how an individual researcher may obtain access to the unpublished data, if at all possible.
A data availability statement can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple types of research data):
|
Type of access |
Suggested text |
|
No research data were used in the study |
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study. |
|
Data are included in the article or its supplementary materials |
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files]. |
|
Data are publicly available |
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [name] repository, [persistent web link to datasets]. |
|
Access to data is restricted |
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to [reason why data are not public] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request [contact email to the author]. |
|
The owner of the data is a third party |
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. Data are, however, available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name]. |
If you wish or need to, due to the journal’s policy, share the underlying data with reviewers but do not want to make them publicly available before your article is published, you may share the data using a private link which you include in the data availability statement upon article submission.
The option to use a private link is offered, for example, by the generic repository Zenodo through a combination of restricted access to data and the Link sharing function; by the generic repository Figshare via the Private links function; or by the osf.io platform using a View-only link.
Upon acceptance of your article, publish the data openly in a repository and, during the final editing of your article, replace the private link with a persistent link to the published data.
Residency, Invoicing and Correspondence Address
Charles University
Central Library
Ovocný trh 560/5
116 36 Prague 1
Czech Republic
Office Address
José Martího 2 (2nd floor)
160 00 Prague 6
Phone: +420 224 491 839, 172
E-mail: openscience@cuni.cz
Www: openscience.cuni.cz
