Sharing and Citing Your Research Data

In the academic community, researchers are under increasing pressure to share and archive their data due to funders now mandating data publication. Sharing data allows others to reuse experimental results and build on previous findings, which improves the efficiency of the research process. It also supports the critical goals of transparency and reproducibility.

At ICRP, we support the growing movement towards making research more open as it leads to a fairer, more efficient, and accountable research landscape. This will ultimately drive a more effective and faster pace of discovery. We are committed to improving the openness, transparency, and reproducibility of research.

Easy access to research data and its ready discovery is fundamental to enabling reproducible research. This can only be made possible through a robust and universal framework that allows research data to be cited through standard reference lists. This ensures that data is treated as a first-class research object, easily accessible as part of the scholarly literature, and researchers are credited for their work.

Select an option below to learn more about ICRP's data sharing and citation policies and services.

Data Sharing Policies

ICRP is dedicated to promoting an open research environment that enables faster and more efficient research discovery. We believe that this can be achieved by ensuring the reproducibility and verification of data, methodology, and reporting standards. Hence, we urge the authors of articles published in. our journals t.  share their research data, which may include raw algorithms, protocols, methods, and materials.Refer to the table below to understand the various standardized data-sharing policy categories:

	The data availability statement is published	Data has been shared2	Data has been peer-reviewed	Example ICRP journals
Encourages Data Sharing	Optional	Optional	Optional
Expects Data Sharing	Required	Optional	Optional
Mandates Data Sharing	Required	Required	Optional
Mandates Data Sharing and Peer Reviews Data	Required	Required	Required

1 A data availability statement confirms the presence or absence of shared data.

2 Links to data in data availability statements are checked to ensure they link to the data that the authors intended. If data have been shared in a data repository, the data availability statement includes a permanent link to the data. Shared data is also cited.

3 Quality and/or replicability of linked data are peer reviewed. Depending on the journal, this may be to peer review the quality of the data by ensuring that the results in the paper and the data in the repository align (for example, sample sizes and variables match), or it may be to peer review the replicability of the data to ensure that the claims presented in the journal article are valid and can be reproduced.

Encourages Data Sharing

“[Journal] encourages authors to share the data and other artefacts supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors may provide a data availability statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published in their paper. Shared data should be cited.” All accepted manuscripts may elect to publish a data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data. If you have shared data, this statement will describe how the data can be accessed, and include a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI for the data, or an accession number) from the repository where you shared the data. You may use the Standard Templates for Author Use or draft your own.

Expects Data Sharing

“[Journal] expects that data supporting the results in the paper will be archived in an appropriate public repository. Authors are required to provide a data availability statement to describe the availability or the absence of shared data. When data have been shared, authors are required to include in their data availability statement a link to the repository they have used, and to cite the data they have shared. Whenever possible the scripts and other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper should also be publicly archived. If sharing data compromises ethical standards or legal requirements then authors are not expected to share it."

Mandates Data Sharing

“[Journal] requires, as a condition for publication, that the data supporting the results in the paper will be archived in an appropriate public repository. Authors are required to provide a data availability statement, including a link to the repository they have used, and to cite the data they have shared. Whenever possible the scripts and other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper should also be publicly archived. Exceptions may be granted at the discretion of the editor, for example, if sharing data compromises privacy of human data, ethical standards or legal requirements. If authors are unable to share data (for example, if sharing data compromises ethical standards or legal requirements) then authors are not required to share it and must describe restrictions in their data availability statement.”

Mandates Data Sharing and Peer Reviews of Data

“[Journal] requires, as a condition for publication, that the data supporting the results in the paper will be peer-reviewed and archived in an appropriate public repository. Authors are required to provide a data availability statement, including a link to the repository they have used, and to cite the data they have shared. Whenever possible the scripts and other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper should also be publicly archived. Exceptions may be granted at the discretion of the editor. If sharing data compromises ethical standards or legal requirements then authors are not required to share it.”

And:

“Peer review of empirical data will be conducted to confirm the quality of the shared data, for example, that sample sizes match, that the variables described in the article are present as fields in the data repository, that data is complete; that data is properly labelled and described; and that it has the appropriate metadata for the kind of data being shared.”

Or:

“Peer review of empirical data will be conducted to confirm that the data reproduce the analytic results reported in the paper.”

Standard Templates for Author Use

Below is a list of standard templates for the text that will appear in the "Data Availability Statement" portion of your article.. These statements adhere to guidelines set forth to comply with journals that have an "Expects Data" or "Mandates Data" policy.

Availability of data	Template for data availability statement
Data openly available in a public repository that issues datasets with DOIs	The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name e.g “figshare”] at http://doi.org/[doi], reference number [reference number].
Data openly available in a public repository that does not issue DOIs	The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name] at [URL], reference number [reference number].
Data derived from public domain resources	The data that support the findings of this study are available in [repository name] at [URL/DOI], reference number [reference number]. These data were derived from the following resources available in the public domain: [list resources and URLs]
Embargo on data due to commercial restrictions	The data that support the findings will be available in [repository name] at [URL / DOI link] following an embargo from the date of publication to allow for commercialization of research findings.
Data available on request due to privacy/ethical restrictions	The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
Data subject to third party restrictions	The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party]. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for this study. Data are available [from the authors / at URL] with the permission of [third party].
Data available on request from the authors	The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Data sharing not applicable – no new data generated	Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.
Author elects to not share data	Research data are not shared.
Data available in article supplementary material	The data that supports the findings of this study are available in the supplementary material of this article
Data sharing not applicable – no new data generated, or the article describes entirely theoretical research	Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study

When data is available and linked, authors will need to provide a citation of the data in their reference list.

Data citation:

[dataset]Authors; Year; Dataset title; Data repository or archive; Version (if any); Persistent identifier (e.g. DOI)

The term [Dataset] will be removed before publication.

How to choose an appropriate data repository

See below for ICRP’s recommended methods of choosing an appropriate data repository for your research:

• Visit re3data.org or fairsharing.org to help identify registered and certified data repositories relevant to your subject area

Data Citation Policy

In recognition of the significance of data as an output of research effort, ICRP has endorsed the FORCE11 Data Citation Principles. Data must be cited in the same way as article, book, and web citations and authors are required to include data citations as part of their reference list.

Data citation is appropriate for data held within institutional, subject-focused, or more general data repositories. It is not intended to take the place of community standards such as in-line citation of GenBank accession codes. When citing or making claims based on data, authors should refer to the data at the relevant place in the manuscript text and in addition provide a formal citation in the reference list. We recommend the format proposed by the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles:

[dataset] Authors; Year; Dataset title; Data repository or archive; Version (if any); Persistent identifier (e.g. DOI)

Add [dataset] immediately before the reference so we can properly identify it as a data reference. The [dataset] identifier will not appear in your published article.

Data Sharing

ICRP has a bold vision for the future in which research data is shared openly, and we plan to accomplish this vision through partnerships and collaborations. We are members of Crossref to make it easy for authors to share data in approved repositories to comply with funder and journal mandates.