Data access statements
Research outputs that rely on supporting data, code and other materials should provide information about where and how these materials can be accessed. This is a requirement specified by UKRI in its Common Principles on Research Data and Open Access Policy, as well as by other funders of research. Many publishers also ask for articles to be accompanied by what is referred to as a data access statement or data availability statement.
This requirement applies to primary materials created in the reported research. You would not be expected to include secondary data sources in a data access statement, although these should be referenced in the article following standard practice, using the data source DOI or other unique identifier whenever possible.
The data access statement will usually appear either at the head of the article or in the end matter, often in the Acknowledgements section. Your journal's guidance for authors should indicate how to provide your data access statement.
We also recommend that you include a full citation to the dataset in your main references list. An example citation is provided further down this page.
You must bear this requirement in mind when preparing your research outputs. In order to be able to cite your data from the output, you will have to first deposit the dataset in your chosen data repository.
Data access statement: principles
These general principles apply when providing a data access statement. Examples are provided further down the page:
- if data are held in a data repository, the name of the data repository they are stored in should be provided, as well as any unique persistent identifier (e.g. the DOI) or accession number for the dataset;
- if there are legal, ethical or commercial reasons why some or all data cannot be made openly available, any restrictions should be specified in the data access statement;
- if data have been provided in full in the article or as supplementary information, this should be stated;
- a direction to contact the author for access to data would not normally be considered an acceptable data access statement.
Examples
Below there are examples of data access statements covering a variety of different scenarios. In these examples a dummy DOI is used; this will not resolve.
Openly available data
Data supporting the results reported in this paper are openly available from the University of Reading Research Data Archive at https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.000999.
All data supporting this study are provided as supplementary information accompanying this paper.
All data are provided in full in the results section of this paper.
Secondary analysis of existing data
This study was a re-analysis of data that are publicly available from the British Atmospheric Data Centre at [DOI]. Data derived through the re-analysis undertaken in this study are available from the University of Reading Research Data Archive at https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.000999.
Ethical restrictions
Interview transcripts from participants who consented to data sharing, plus other supporting information, are available from the UK Data Service, subject to registration, at [DOI].
in order to protect participant confidentiality, supporting data cannot be made openly available. Further information about the data and conditions for access are available at the University of Reading Research Data Archive: https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.000999.
Because of the sensitive nature of the research, interviewees did not consent to the retention or sharing of their data.
Commercial restrictions
Supporting data will be available from the University of Reading Research Data Archive at https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.000999 after a 6 month embargo from the date of publication to allow for commercialisation of research findings.
Because of confidentiality agreements with research collaborators, supporting data can only be made available to bona fide researchers subject to a non-disclosure agreement. Details of the data and how to request access are available at the University of Reading Research Data Archive: https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.000999.
Non-digital data
Non-digital data supporting this study are stored by the corresponding author at the University of Reading. Details of how to request access to these data are available from the University of Reading Research Data Archive at https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.000999.
No new data created
No new data were created in this study.
Standard data citation (include in reference list)
The standard citation format for a dataset in the University's Research Data Archive is:
Creator(s) (PublicationYear): Title. Publisher. Resource Type. Identifier
For example:
Smith, John and Jones, David (2015): Electricity pylons of the UK, 1928-2005. University of Reading. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.000999.
This is the citation citation format recommended by DataCite, the organisation that assigns a permanent Digital Object Identifier to the dataset record.
When you create the metadata record in the Research Data Archive it will automatically generate a citation for you in this format that can be copied and pasted into your list of references. The citation can be easily reformatted in accordance with a particular citation style.