Research Data Policy
Supporting transparency and reproducibility while protecting participants, confidential information, and legitimate data restrictions.
Policy Principle
Authors should make the data necessary to support, evaluate, and where appropriate reproduce the findings of a published article available whenever this is ethically, legally, and practically possible.
Data Availability Statement
Manuscripts should include a Data Availability Statement describing where supporting data can be found or explaining why access is restricted. The statement should provide a repository link, persistent identifier, access procedure, or other information necessary to understand the availability of the underlying data.
Repositories
Where suitable repositories exist, authors are encouraged to deposit datasets in established disciplinary, institutional, or general-purpose repositories that provide persistent identifiers, appropriate access controls, and long-term stewardship.
Sensitive or Restricted Data
Public data sharing is not required where it would violate participant privacy, informed-consent conditions, ethics approval, confidentiality obligations, applicable law, contractual restrictions, legitimate intellectual-property rights, or other justified limitations.
In these circumstances, authors should explain the restriction in the Data Availability Statement and, where appropriate, describe how qualified researchers may request controlled access.
Clinical and Human Participant Data
Authors must not publicly disclose identifiable or inadequately de-identified participant information. Data sharing must remain consistent with informed consent, institutional approvals, data-protection requirements, and applicable laws and regulations.
Data Citation
Publicly available datasets should be cited where appropriate using sufficient information to identify the dataset and its creators, including a persistent identifier when available.
Editorial Requests for Data
Editors may request underlying data, analysis outputs, protocols, original images, or related materials when needed to evaluate a manuscript, investigate a concern, or protect the integrity of the scholarly record. Legitimate privacy and legal restrictions will be considered when such requests are made.