Data access statements

• How to add a data access statement

  Journals might have specific guidelines regarding the formatting and wording of data access statements and where they should be included. Authors should check these guidelines to ensure that their datasets are cited correctly. 

  If no guidance is provided by the journal, it is recommended to include a data access statement either in a section provided in the article template from your journal or as a sentence within the acknowledgements section. If the statement point to publicly available data, a full citation should also be included in the list of references, for example:

  Data access statement:

  The research data supporting this publication can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.17630/c47ff360-09d4-4620-9ebf-bbb8792fb808 [39].

  References:

  [39] Wahl, P. et al. Discovery of a strain-stabilized smectic electronic order in LiFeAs (dataset). University of St Andrews Research Portal.  https://doi.org/10.17630/c47ff360-09d4-4620-9ebf-bbb8792fb808 (2018)."

• Case: Data are publicly available

  This is the simplest case of data access statement. If the data have been deposited in a public repository, generic or subject specific, the data access statement needs to point the reader to the dataset location. The statement should ideally provide a persistent identifier such as a DOI or an accession number with the link to the archive or repository. For example:

  'The data underpinning this research are available from the University of St Andrews Data Repository, https://doi.org/10.17630/9a9de4c3-7d69-4037-9c76-6f140f4e03dd." 

  Or alternatively,

  "The raw FASTQ files generated during this project have been submitted to the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) under project accession number PRJEB55791."

• Case: Secondary data and primary sources

  If your research is based on the use of secondary data, primary sources (for example archival documents) or more generally data or material owned by a third party, then it is likely you will not have permissions to make those data publicly available. In this case the data access statement should provide information of the sources of data and on whether there are conditions for access. If through the course of your study you have analysed the existing data and have generated new derived data, you should make those data publicly available and add their DOI to the statement. For example:

  "Data used for this study were obtained from [insert details with URLs if possible] and are subject to access restrictions"

  "This study is based on the use of pre-existing data that are publicly available at [insert DOI or URL]"

  "This study is based on the use of primary sources accessed from several archives. A full list of the sources is available in the reference list"

  "The data underpinning this study were obtained from the authors of [DOI or URL] after making a request"

   

   

• Case: No data or sources

  If your research is not based on any data/sources new or pre-existing, then you will still need a statement:

  "This study is not based on any new or pre-existing data."

• Case: Sensitive data

  If your research involved human participants, what you can do with the data is dictated by what was stated in the consent forms and participant information sheets. Funders and the University expect every effort to make data publicly available. This includes asking research participant consent for sharing anonymised data. If participants were not asked or did not consent your data access statement needs to specify this:

  "The terms of participants' consent do not allow the data to be made publicly available."

  If your participants consented to the anonymised data being made available only to bona fide researchers your statement will need to include information on how requests can be made. You could consider having a metadata record in Pure or another repository describing access conditions in details:

  "Due to the terms of participants consent, the anonymised data can be made available to bona fide researchers upon request. Details of how to make a request and conditions for approval are available at [insert URL or DOI]."

   

• Case: Large data

  If some of your data exceeds the file size for your chosen repository, you can create a statement that communicates this and how to access the data:

  "Due to file size it is not possible to make associated data readily available. For access, email [email]@st-andrews.ac.uk and request the dataset associated with [DOI of article]."