Availability of Data and Material/ Data Access Statement:

Definition:
Availability of Data and Material or Data Access Statement state that the reader where the research data associated with an article is available, and under what conditions the data can be accessed. They also include links (where applicable) to the data set. Authors are required to make materials, data, code, and associated protocols promptly available to readers without undue qualifications. Any restrictions on the availability of materials or information must be disclosed to the editors at the time of submission. Any restrictions must also be disclosed in the submitted article.

When submitting, authors are encouraged to state a data statement to their article. In the statement, they can identify the data they used in the article and indicate its availability, for example in a data repository. Authors should be prepared to maintain research data for a reasonable number of years after publication. It is strongly recommended that authorship is anonymized in data when a journal operates double-blind peer review. A number of repositories have features to support this, providing peer review access via links that don’t include author information. These links provide private access before the data is publicly available.

After publication, readers who encounter refusal by the authors to comply with these policies should contact the chief editor of the journal. In cases where editors are unable to resolve a complaint, the journal may refer the matter to the authors’ funding institution and/or publish a formal statement of correction, attached online to the publication, stating that readers have been unable to obtain necessary materials to replicate the findings.

Reporting Requirements:

Reporting Requirement Required to provide that will be made available to editors and reviewers during article assessment.
Life Sciences, Behavioral & Social Sciences and Ecology, Evolution & Environmental Sciences Research Details about elements of experimental and analytical design that are frequently poorly reported in a reporting summary.
Physical Sciences Research Details of characterization, or experimental and analytical design in a reporting summary.
Geological, Archaeological, and Paleontological Research Details of geological samples, archaeological materials and paleontological specimens should include clear provenance information to ensure full transparency of the research methods.

Availability of Data Access Statement:
Authors ensure that they have included data availability statement within the text of the article, just before the ‘References’ section. So that readers can easily find it, please give it the heading ‘Data Availability Statement’ under the main heading of Declaration.

The data availability statement must make the conditions of access to the “minimum dataset” that are necessary to interpret, verify and extend the research in the article, transparent to readers. This minimum dataset may be provided through deposition in public community/discipline-specific repositories, custom proprietary repositories for certain types of datasets, or general repositories. For more information about repositories are available at https://www.ijbsac.org/repositories/

Providing large datasets in supplementary information is strongly discouraged and the preferred approach is to make data available in repositories.

Corresponding Authors (CAs) can refer to the authorship policy for information about CAs responsibilities for preserving and making available data, code and materials upon publication. The authors are responsible for obtaining all necessary permissions and ensuring compliance with local regulatory requirements for data sharing. Data availability statements should include information where relevant on the following aspects:

  • Datasets: Information about access to primary datasets (generated during the study) and referenced datasets (datasets analyzed in the study) must be provided.  Where data are publicly available, accession codes or other unique identifiers if relevant must be provided.
  • Clinical Trial Data: data availability statements for articles reporting clinical trial data should follow the standards set out in the ICMJE recommendations on clinical trial data sharing and provide the following information:
  • Data Availability Subject to Controlled Access: the data availability statement should include the following information: reasons for controlled access (eg., privacy, ethical/legal issues), conditions of access must be described precisely including contact details for access requests, timeframe for response to requests, restrictions imposed on data use via data use agreements. A copy of or link to the data use agreement should be provided if requested by editors.  Restrictions on controlled access datasets including restrictions on downstream data reuse or authorship requirements must be clearly described in the article and to editors at the time of submission. Editors may decline further consideration of the article after evaluation if restrictions are found to be unduly prohibitive.
  • Third Party Data: when data obtained from third parties cannot be made available, the restrictions should be clearly stated in the data availability statement. Authors must make data available for purposes of peer review, if requested by reviewers, within the terms of a data use agreement and if compliant with ethical and legal requirements.
  • Proprietary data: Authors are responsible for ensuring and obtaining agreement with the third-party data provider that dataset (s) used in the study will be available under conditions specified in the data availability statement (including whether the dataset will be available for a fee) so as to ensure post-publication availability for replication and verification purposes.  Availability for this purpose must be clearly stated in the data availability statement.
  • Administrative data (including data held by governments, local authorities and international organizations): Social science and other studies using administrative data must ensure that the data are used in compliance with local regulatory and legal frameworks that govern data use.
  • Identity of third-party provider: the identity of the third-party data provider must be made known to the editors at time of submission and peer review. We expect that the data availability statement will state the identity of the third-party data source; exceptions may be made for studies where the identity of the data provider is not relevant to the study and/or public release pose a reputational or commercial risk to the data provider.  

Researchers should provide information in the article on their data collection methods sufficient to support peer review. If data processing steps were performed by the third party, out of the control of the authors, this should be clearly stated in the methods. Editors reserve the right to decline consideration if an article fails to provide sufficient information regarding data collection approach.

Templates for Data Availability Statements:
Below is a list of standard templates for the text that will appear in the “Data Availability Statement” portion in the article. When multiple data sets are being described, please provide information regarding the data type for the benefit of the reader (adopted/ adapted from AIP).

Availability of Data Templates for Data Availability Statements
Data available on request from the authors The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Data available in article or supplementary material The data that supports the findings of this study are available within the article [and its
supplementary material].
Data openly available in a public repository that issues datasets with DOIs The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name] at http://doi.org/[doi], reference number [reference number].
Data openly available in a public repository that does not issue DOIs The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name], reference number [reference number].
Data sharing not applicable – no new data generated Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.
Data sharing not applicable – no new data generated Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.
Data generated at a central, large scale facility Raw data were generated at the [facility name] large scale facility. Derived data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Embargo on data due to commercial restrictions The data that support the findings will be available in [repository name] at [DOI link] following an embargo from the date of publication to allow for commercialization of research findings.
Data available on request due to privacy/ethical restrictions The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due [state restrictions such as privacy or ethical restrictions].
Data subject to 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 upon reasonable request and with the permission of [third party].

Data Citation:
Datasets that have been deposited in repositories should be included as formal citations in the article reference list. This includes datasets generated during the study as well as existing datasets analyzed during the study. Citations of datasets should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow Nature Portfolio style includings: author(s), title, publisher (repository name), and identifier.

Dataset identifiers including DOIs should be expressed as full URLs.  For example: Hao, Z., AghaKouchak, A., Nakhjiri, N. & Farahmand, A. Global Integrated Drought Monitoring and Prediction System (GIDMaPS) Data sets. figshare http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.853801 (2014)

Availability of Materials:
Any restrictions on material availability, including if materials are to be distributed by a for-profit company, must be clearly stated in the article. As per the authorship responsibilities, it is expected that the corresponding author (or relevant designated authors) will be responsible for materials availability unless otherwise stated.

The journal supports the Resource Identification Initiative, with the aim of promoting unique, persistent identification and tracking of key biological resources, including antibodies, cell lines, model organisms and tools. Journal encourage authors to include unique identifiers provided by the Resource Identification Portal, (RRIDs; for example, Antibody: RRID:AB_2140114; Organism: RRID: MGI_MGI:3840442), in the article. More information on how to include listed RRIDs or generate new RRIDs can be found on the Resource Identification Portal.

Authors reporting new chemical compounds integral to the conclusions of the article must provide the chemical structure, synthesis and characterization of the compounds with sufficient experimental details to allow other researchers to reproduce the synthesis and characterization.

For biological materials such as mutant strains and cell lines the Nature Portfolio journals recommend authors use established public repositories when one exists (for example, Jackson Laboratory, the European Mouse Mutant Archive (EMMA), the European Conditional Mouse Mutagenesis Program (EUCOMM), the Knockout Mouse Project (KOMP), Addgene, RIKEN Bioresource Centre, the Mutant Mouse Regional Resource Centers, American Type Culture Collection, and provide accession numbers in the article.

Availability Computer Code and Algorithm:
Authors must make available upon request, to editors and reviewers, any previously unreported custom computer code or algorithm used to generate results that are reported in the article and central to its main claims. Any reason that would preclude the need for code or algorithm sharing will be evaluated by the editors who reserve the right to decline the article if important code is unavailable.

For all studies using custom code or mathematical algorithm that is deemed central to the conclusions, a statement must be included under the heading “Code availability”, indicating whether and how the code or algorithm can be accessed, including any restrictions to access. Code availability statements should be provided as a separate section after the data availability statement but before the references.

Code should be deposited in a DOI-minting repository such as Zenodo, Gigantum or Code Ocean and cited in the reference list following the guidelines described here. Authors are encouraged to manage subsequent code versions and to use a license approved by the open-source initiative. Full details about how the code can be accessed and any restrictions must be described in the Code Availability statement.

Peer Review of Code/Algorithm/Software:
For code/algorithm peer review, it requires release of code/algorithm during the peer review process, verification by peer reviewers and release of code/algorithm at publication. This journal encourages authors to share their step-by-step experimental protocols on a protocol sharing platform of their choice. Where such protocols are available, please provide a DOI or other citation details in the article.