Data policies and repositories

Where data is too large to be feasibly hosted by an F1000-approved repository, please include all necessary information required for a reader or reviewer to access the data alongside a description of this process in your data availability statement. 

We recommend authors strive to make their data as open as possible and as closed as necessary. However, we recognize that openly sharing data may not always be feasible due to ethical considerations or third-party restrictions. 

Datasets that contain personal data can often be shared by ensuring you have informed consent for data sharing, have applied appropriate anonymization techniques, and/or controlled access to the data. 

Where human data cannot be sufficiently de-identified to protect participant privacy, we recommend depositing the data into a controlled access repository if your ethical approval permits you to do so. 

If you cannot share the data in a repository, please include in your data availability statement: an explanation of the data protection concern; what, if anything, the relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent said about data sharing; and, where applicable, all necessary information required for a reader or reviewer to apply for access to the data and the conditions under which access will be granted. 

You may have used someone else’s data, such as an existing survey, as part of your research. 

To ensure that data creators receive credit for their data, you should cite any datasets you used in your article’s body and add them to your list of references and data availability statement.  

In cases where data has been obtained from a third party and restrictions apply to the availability of the data, the data availability statement must include additional elements. To begin with, you should provide all the necessary information required for a reader or reviewer to access the data by the same means as you, the author. Plus, you should include publicly available data that is representative of the analyzed data and can be used to apply the methodology described in your article. 

If data access is restricted for ethical or security reasons, please use your data availability statement to include a description of the restrictions on the data and all necessary information required for a reader or reviewer to apply for access. We also ask that you share the conditions under which access will be granted. 

If you are unable to share your data for any reason not included here, or have additional questions about data sharing, please let our Εditorial team know and they will be happy to advise.