Research Data

Please note: The following policy applies to all submissions to SAFE Journal of One Health.

Introduction

The journal requires authors to make all data necessary to replicate their study's findings publicly available without restriction at the time of publication. When specific legal or ethical restrictions prohibit public sharing of a data set, authors must indicate how others may obtain access to the data.

When submitting a manuscript, authors must provide a Data Availability Statement describing compliance with the journal's data policy. If the article is accepted for publication, the Data Availability Statement will be published as part of the article.

The journal believes that sharing data fosters scientific progress. Data availability allows and facilitates:

Validation, replication, reanalysis, new analysis, reinterpretation or inclusion into meta-analyses.
Reproducibility of research.
Efforts to ensure data are archived, increasing the value of the investment made in funding scientific research.
Reduction of the burden on authors in preserving and finding old data, and managing data access requests.
Citation and linking of research data and their associated articles, enhancing visibility and ensuring recognition for authors, data producers and curators.

Publication is conditional on compliance with this policy. If restrictions on access to data come to light after publication, the journal reserves the right to post a Correction, an Editorial Expression of Concern, contact the authors' institutions and funders, or, in extreme cases, retract the publication.

Strongly recommended: The journal strongly encourages sharing data in a repository whenever possible. Data repositories improve discoverability and accessibility, ensure long-term preservation, and lead to increased attention for the research.

Minimal Data Set Definition

Related policy: Materials, Software and Code Sharing

Authors must share the "minimal data set" for their submission — the data required to replicate all study findings reported in the article, as well as related metadata and methods. Authors are additionally required to comply with field-specific standards for the preparation, recording, and deposition of data when applicable.

For example, authors should submit the following data:

The values behind the means, standard deviations and other measures reported.
The values used to build graphs.
The points extracted from images for analysis.

The journal does not permit references to "data not shown." Authors should deposit relevant data in a public data repository or provide the data in the manuscript.

The journal requires authors to provide sample image data in support of all reported results, either with the submission files or in a public repository. Authors must also provide original, uncropped and minimally adjusted images supporting all blot and gel results.

Acceptable Data Sharing Methods

Deposition within a data repository (strongly recommended)

All data and related metadata underlying reported findings should be deposited in appropriate public data repositories, unless already provided as part of a submitted article. Repositories may be either subject-specific repositories that accept specific types of structured data, or cross-disciplinary generalist repositories that accept multiple data types.

The Data Availability Statement must list the name of the repository or repositories as well as digital object identifiers (DOIs), accession numbers or codes, or other persistent identifiers for all relevant data.

Additional guidance on acceptable repositories can be found here.

Data citation

The journal encourages authors to cite any publicly available research data in their reference list. References to data sets (data citations) must include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI). Citations of data sets should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style.

Data in Supporting Information files

Although authors are encouraged to directly deposit data in appropriate repositories, data can be included in Supporting Information files. Authors should submit data in file formats that are standard in their field and allow wide dissemination.

Upon publication, the journal uploads all Supporting Information files associated with an article to the figshare repository to increase compliance with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). Supporting Information files are published exactly as provided and are not copyedited. Each file should be less than 20 MB.

Data Management Plans

Some funding agencies have policies on the preparation and sharing of Data Management Plans (DMPs). The journal encourages authors to prepare DMPs before conducting their research and encourages authors to make those plans available to editors, reviewers and readers who wish to assess them.

The following resources may be consulted for guidance on DMPs:

Acceptable Data Access Restrictions

The journal recognises that, in some instances, authors may not be able to make their underlying data set publicly available for legal or ethical reasons. Where these frameworks prevent or limit data release, authors must make these limitations clear in the Data Availability Statement at the time of submission.

Please note it is not acceptable for an author to be the sole named individual responsible for ensuring data access.

Third-party data

For studies involving third-party data, the journal encourages authors to share any data specific to their analyses that they can legally distribute. When third-party data cannot be publicly shared, authors must provide information about data access.

For any third-party data that the authors cannot legally distribute, they should include the following information in their Data Availability Statement:

A description of the data set and the third-party source.
If applicable, verification of permission to use the data set.
All necessary contact information others would need to apply to gain access to the data.
If applicable, information about any known restrictions to data set accessibility.

Human research participant data and other sensitive data

For studies involving human research participant data or other sensitive data, the journal encourages authors to share de-identified or anonymised data. However, when data cannot be publicly shared, the journal allows authors to make their data sets available upon request.

If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a sensitive data set, authors should provide the following in their Data Availability Statement:

Explain the restrictions in detail (e.g., data contain potentially identifying or sensitive patient information).
Provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent.

General guidelines for human research participant data

Data sharing should never compromise participant privacy. It is therefore not appropriate to publicly share personally identifiable data on human research participants. The following are examples of data that should not be shared:

Name, initials, physical address.
Internet protocol (IP) address.
Specific dates (birth dates, death dates, examination dates, etc.).
Contact information such as phone number or email address.
Location data.

Guidelines for qualitative data

For studies analysing data collected as part of qualitative research, authors should make excerpts of the transcripts relevant to the study available in an appropriate data repository, within the paper, or upon request if they cannot be shared publicly.

Other sensitive data

Some data that do not describe human research participants may also be sensitive. Examples of sensitive data that may be subject to restrictions include data from field studies in protected areas, locations of sensitive archaeological sites, and locations of endangered or threatened species.

Unacceptable Data Access Restrictions

The journal will not consider manuscripts for which the following factors influence authors' ability to share data:

Authors will not share data because of personal interests, such as patents or potential future publications.
The conclusions depend solely on the analysis of proprietary data that will not be shared with other researchers for reasons that may be linked to competing interests. If proprietary data are used, the manuscript must include an analysis of publicly available data that validates the study's conclusions so that others can reproduce the analysis and build on the study's findings.

FAQs

General questions

Why do we not allow an author to be the only point of contact for fielding requests for access to restricted data?

Where possible, the journal recommends authors deposit restricted data to a repository that allows for controlled data access. Directing data requests to a non-author institutional point of contact, such as a data access or ethics committee, helps guarantee long-term stability and availability of data even if an author changes institutions or becomes unavailable.

When was the current data policy implemented?

The data policy was implemented on March 3, 2014. Any paper submitted before that date will not have a Data Availability Statement. For all manuscripts submitted or published before this date, data must be made available upon reasonable request.

Download the full text of the older policy (PDF)

What if my article does not contain any data?

All articles must include a Data Availability Statement. For manuscripts that do not report data, authors must state in their Data Availability Statement that their article does not report data and the data availability policy is not applicable to their article.

Depositing data

What if I cannot provide accession numbers or DOIs for my data set at submission?

Authors may submit their manuscript and include placeholder language in their Data Availability Statement indicating that accession numbers and/or DOIs will be made available after acceptance. The journal office will contact authors prior to publication to ask for this information and will hold the paper until it is received.

Is the journal integrated with any repositories?

The journal partners with repositories to support data sharing and compliance with the data policy. Current partners include Dryad and FlowRepository. Partner repositories may have a data submission fee; the journal is not able to cover this fee and authors are under no obligation to use any specific repository.

Contact

For questions about the data availability policy, please contact the Editorial Office.

Editorial Office — SAFE Journal of One Health
Published by The SAFE Society Publishing
Email: editor@thesafesociety.com
Website: https://journal.thesafesociety.com