Data Availability Statement in Academic Publications
A Data Availability Statement, or DAS, should be included in every manuscript that is based on research data. The DAS is used to describe where the data associated with the manuscript is available and under what conditions. Properly creating a DAS and communicating the availability of the underlying research data of a given manuscript increases the credibility of your work and makes it easier to meet the conditions of individual publishers for successfully publishing an academic article.
How to write a Data Availability Statement
We recommend that authors include a (Data Availability Statement, DAS) in all manuscripts based on research data. The statement should include information on where the data supporting the results presented in the paper can be found, possibly including hyperlinks to publicly available datasets uploaded to a data repository, as well as a persistent identifier for the published data (e.g., DOI).
If the research data are not publicly available, this must be stated in the DAS, together with a contact (email) through which the underlying data can be requested. If there are conditions that prevent you from sharing/providing the data openly, it is a good idea to explain these reasons in the DAS (e.g. the sensitive nature of the data; economic interests).
| Types of access to data: | Examples of text for DAS: |
|---|---|
| All underlying data are included in the article, section „Supplementary Information“ | The data underlying this study are available in the published article and its Supporting Information. |
| The underlying data are publicly available in a data repository | The data underlying this study are openly available in [Repository Name] at [Link to data in Repository; Persistent Identifier DOI]. |
| The underlying data comes from a publicly available article/resource | The data underlying this study are openly available in [Repository Name] at [Link to data in Repository, Persistent Identifier DOI]. These data were derived from sources in the public domain [list sources, including URLs]. |
| The underlying data are available on request from the author for ethical/legal reasons | The data underlying this study are not publicly available due to [explanation of reasons for not sharing, e.g., patient privacy issues; GDPR; etc.]. The data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request [e-mail contact to the author]. |
| The owner of the underlying data is a third party | The data underlying this study were provided by [name and contact of the Third Party] under license/by permission. Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request with the permission of [Third Party]. |
| No underlying data was generated during the creation of the article | No new data were generated or analyzed in support of this study. |
- For the placement of the Data Availability Statement section in the manuscript, we recommend following the terms and conditions of each publisher. In most cases, the Data Availability Statement (DAS) will be placed in the manuscript under the heading "Data Availability Statement" as part of the final section of the paper, for example, before the "Reference" section.
What should you do if the publisher has set a condition for data sharing?
When uploading your manuscript for peer review, you may encounter strict conditions for sharing the underlying research data for publication with some publishers. While some publishers set data sharing as only recommended when publishing in their academic journals, for other publishers these conditions may be different for each journal and data sharing may even be mandatory.
| Publisher | DAS mandatory | Data sharing recommended | Data sharing mandatory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Springer Nature | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Wiley | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Cambridge University Press | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Elsevier | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Sage | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| De Gruyter | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Taylor & Francis | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| American Chemical Society (ACS) | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| The Nature | ✔ | ✔ | |
| PLOS One | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Royal Society of Chemistry | ✔ | ✔ |
Updated on 15.10.2025
For most academic publishers, data sharing is recommended only after the article has been accepted for publication, but for some publishers, it is a common condition to publish data for Peer Review. Therefore, it is important to always read the terms and conditions of the publisher or a specific journal before uploading a manuscript for review.
Similarly individual publishers may specify a preferred data repository, in which your underlying data should be published. If it is not necessary to publish data in a specific repository, the publisher will usually provide a list of recommended data repositories in the terms and conditions for authors, which you can use as inspiration for choosing a repository.
| Publisher | Data already for Peer Review? | Specific repository? |
|---|---|---|
| Springer Nature (including Nature Portfolio) | Varies by journal – reviewers may be asked to evaluate data as well | No, only repository recommendations |
| Wiley | Varies by journal; recommended | No, only repository recommendations |
| Cambridge University Press | Vary by journal; recommended | No, only repository recommendations |
| SAGE | Varies by journal – reviewers may be asked to evaluate data as well | Partnership with FigShare - automatic archiving of data if you choose to share it with the article |
| De Gruyter | Yes – depending on the “level” of the journals, sharing is mandatory and data can be subject to Peer Review | No, only repository recommendations |
| Taylor & Francis | Varies by journal; more likely after article acceptance | No, only repository recommendations |
| American Chemical Society (ACS) | Rather, after acceptance of the article (it is recommended that the data be public "at the time of publication"; during Peer Review, data may be requested according to the guidelines of the specific journal) | No, only repository recommendations |
| PLOS ONE | Yes – private access for reviewers/editors during Peer Review | No, only repository recommendations |
| Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) | Yes – “data required for verification” must be available at the time of submission | No, only repository recommendations |
| Elsevier | Varies by journal; more likely after article acceptance | Only recommended repositories |
Share the underlying data using a private link to data repository
If you need to share the underlying data for your article due to publisher and peer review requirements, you can use the sharing in the data repository using a private link. Private links in repositories allow you to share data with specific individuals (e.g. reviewers) without the data being openly published in the data repository.
In practice, this means that you upload the data to a data repository of your choice that supports private link sharing (e.g. FigShare), and instead of open sharing, you click “share via private link” or the otherwise phrased “private sharing” option.
You can then insert the generated link into the editorial system when uploading the manuscript, or include it in the Data Availability Statement with a note that it is a temporary private link that will be replaced by a permanent link (when editing the final manuscript just before publication) after a successful review process.
