Data Sharing Policy

Data Sharing Policy

Data Sharing Information:

The Data Sharing Information requirement applies to all original research articles, including observational studies, clinical trials, descriptive studies, and database analyses. For article types that do not involve original data collection or analysis (e.g., narrative reviews, editorials, commentaries, or case reports and case series, without an underlying dataset), authors should select Statement 9 ("No new data generated"), as applicable.

Authors must include a “Data Sharing Information” statement at the end of the manuscript, clearly indicating whether and how the data supporting the findings of the study are available. The statement should accurately reflect the study's data-sharing arrangements.

Authors may use one of the following statements, as applicable:

  1. Open repository (with DOI): Data supporting the findings of this study are available in [repository] at [DOI], reference [number].
  2. Open repository (without DOI): Data supporting the findings of this study are available in [repository] at [URL], reference [number].
  3. Publicly available data sources: Data used in this study are publicly available from [resource/repository] at [URL/DOI].
  4. Embargoed data: Data supporting the findings of this study are available in [repository] at [URL/DOI] and will be publicly accessible after the applicable embargo period.
  5. Privacy or ethical restrictions: The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions but may be available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request, subject to applicable permissions and restrictions.
  6. Third-party restrictions: The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party]. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for this study. Data are available [from the authors / at URL] with the permission of [third party]
  7. Available upon reasonable request: Data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
  8. Supplementary material: Data supporting the findings of this study are included in the article and/or its supplementary material.
  9. No new data generated: No new data were generated or analyzed in this study.
  10. Not shared: “The data supporting the findings of this study are not available for sharing due to [state the reason].”

Data Verification: Authors may be asked to provide raw or processed research data, including SPSS, Excel, or other relevant data files, to the editorial office for verification or assessment during peer review or editorial evaluation. The journal will handle any data provided in accordance with applicable ethical, legal, privacy, and confidentiality requirements.

Where authors state in their Data Availability Statement that research data are available upon reasonable request, or are subject to an embargo or third-party restrictions, they should make the data available in response to a legitimate request, subject to applicable ethical, legal, privacy, confidentiality, and third-party requirements. If authors fail, without adequate justification, to provide the data in accordance with their stated Data Availability Statement, the journal may consider the matter a publication ethics concern. The journal will assess the circumstances in accordance with its data-sharing policy and relevant COPE guidance and may take appropriate editorial action, including publication of a correction, retraction or expression of Concern,  where necessary.

Ethical and Legal Requirements: All data sharing must comply with applicable ethical approvals, institutional requirements, participant consent, privacy and confidentiality obligations, intellectual property rights, and relevant laws and regulations.

Authors selecting a privacy/ethical-restricted, embargoed, third-party-restricted, or 'available upon reasonable request' arrangement must ensure the data remain retrievable for a minimum of five years from the date of publication, or longer where required by funder, institutional, or legal obligations.

Where data cannot be openly shared, authors should provide sufficient information about the applicable restrictions and, where feasible, describe how the findings may be independently assessed or reproduced using the available methodology, analytical code, or other relevant materials.

 Data License: Where data are deposited in an external repository, the repository's own license terms govern reuse of the data, and authors are encouraged to release such datasets under a permissive license such as CC0 or CC BY to maximize reuse, independent of the license applied to the article text. Where data are provided as supplementary material and uploaded together with the manuscript, they are published under the journal's CC BY-NC license, the same as the article itself. Authors who wish their data to carry a different, more permissive license (e.g., CC0) should deposit it in an external repository rather than submit it as supplementary material.

Data Citation: Where applicable, authors should formally cite datasets deposited in a repository or used from a public source within the manuscript's reference list, in addition to describing them in the Data Sharing Information statement above. Data citations should include, at minimum, the creator(s), dataset title, repository or source name, year, and persistent identifier (e.g., DOI or stable URL), formatted as shown in the examples below. Most repositories (e.g., Zenodo, Dryad, figshare) generate a suggested citation automatically at the time of deposit; authors may use this as a starting point but should adjust it to match the format below.

Data citations should include, at minimum, the creator(s), dataset title, repository or source name, year, and persistent identifier (e.g., DOI or stable URL).

Example: For Statements 1–2 (repository-deposited data): Khan A, Ahmed S. Dataset: Serum biomarker levels in patients with type 2 diabetes [dataset]. Zenodo; 2024. Available from: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1234567

Example —For Statement 3 (publicly available data sources):
Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network. Global Burden of Disease Study 2023 (GBD 2023). Seattle, United States: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), 2025. Available from: https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-results/

Example:  Statement 4 (embargoed data):
Ahmed R, Malik F. Dataset: Genomic sequencing data, XYZ cohort [dataset]. Dryad; 2025. Available from: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.abc123 (embargoed until [date]).

Example: Statement 6 (third-party restrictions):
UK Biobank. Cardiovascular risk factor dataset, Application No. 12345 [dataset]. UK Biobank; 2023. Available from: https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk (access restricted; used under license).

Statements 5, 7, 9, and 10 do not involve a citable public dataset and do not require a corresponding reference-list entry.