Data Availability Statement (DAS) guidelines
What does the Data Availability Statement require from the author?
In the Data Availability Statement, the author defines, in accordance with the terms of the journal's data policy, how the background material of the article is available, or whether it remains restricted or completely closed for a justified reason, such as personal data. The openness of the data is the starting point and is part of good research practice whenever there are no obstacles mentioned above.
Data sharing is a term generally used by DASs. "Sharing" in this context refers to making the data available to some degree when it is ethically and legally possible. If the data contains personal information, the type of non-open availability suitable for the degree of availability is selected from the DAS guidelines of the journal. DAS instructions usually contain ready-made model sentences, from which the author chooses the appropriate one.
Journals usually have their own data policy, which can be found in the Data Policy or Data Availability section of the author guidelines.
Example: DAS instructions and model sentences for Taylor & Francis magazines (always follow the instructions of your own journal and publisher): Writing a data availability statement - Author Services (taylorandfrancis.com)
Data that you can publish
Is your data anonymous and otherwise non-sensitive, and do you have the rights to publish it (for example, agreements with the research group or cooperation partners regarding the rights of the parties to the data)? Do this:
Some journals also have their own solutions for publishing data as supplementary material to articles. However, ideally, data is published in a dedicated data repository such as JYX.
Do you need advice? Contact us: researchsupport-osc@jyu.fi.
Non-publishable data
Publishing is not possible if
- the data contains direct or pseudonymous personal data
- it is otherwise confidential or secret
- the author has no rights to publish it.
1. First, find out if the journal allows in its DAS policy that the data can be kept restricted or completely closed, e.g., "Access restricted for a justified reason [X]".
2. When the journal allows restricted access or to keep the data completely closed for a justified reason, select the applicable restriction basis from the journal's instructions.
Examples of Taylor & Francis' DAS models (always use your own journal's models):
"Due to the nature of the research, due to [ethical/legal/commercial] supporting data is not available."
"The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [author initials], upon reasonable request." This option may be suitable for a situation where the researcher has informed the research subjects in the data privacy notice that pseudonymous data can be transferred during the research with a separate agreement upon a reasonable request for the use of another research project. Carefully familiarize yourself with the terms and instructions regarding transfer. Note: if the requester of the data is from outside the EU/EEA area, the information must also mention that the transfer outside the EU/EEA area is possible for a justified reason and under the condition that the country meets the country-specific criteria set for the transfer.
NB! Many use the option "Reasonable request" in situations where there is no real intention to share the data. According to research, the vast majority of those who use the phrase do not even respond to contact requests. JYU in no way encourages this, but we want to emphasize that when the journal requires some kind of access to the data, it is it must be taken seriously and requests answered - even when an affirmative answer is not always possible.
3. Even if you cannot open the dataset itself, file its metadata in Converis and request for its publication in JYX at the point when the dataset is sufficiently ready and the article is published. In this case, you can say in DAS that even though the dataset is not suitable for publication, you will open its descriptive information with a permanent DOI identifier in accordance with the principles of Open Science and good data management practices. Do this: