Data Archiving and Permissions

Every empirical research manuscript must include a data-availability statement. It explains where the data supporting the results can be found, or the conditions under which they can be accessed when ethics approval or consent restricts sharing. Typical statements read:

• Data in a repository: "The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository] at [DOI or URL]."
• Data on request: "The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request."
• Restricted data: "The data are not publicly available because of [ethical, privacy or legal restrictions] and are available from the corresponding author under a data use agreement."
• Data in the article: "All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this article and its supplementary files."

Data are deposited in a discipline-specific or general-purpose repository that assigns a persistent identifier, such as a DOI or accession number. Examples include:

• General: Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad, Open Science Framework
• Sequence and expression data: GenBank, European Nucleotide Archive, Gene Expression Omnibus, ArrayExpress
• Imaging data: the BioImage Archive, Image Data Resource

Custom code, analysis scripts and software used to produce the results are shared where possible, for example through Zenodo, GitHub or GitLab, with version numbers, dependencies and enough documentation to reproduce the analysis.

Data from human participants, and from donated embryos or gametes, are shared only when this is consistent with the consent given and the ethics approval for the study. Before sharing, authors remove information that could identify a person, use a controlled-access repository when full de-identification is not possible, and follow applicable data-protection law.

Identifiable images or detailed case information are published only with written informed consent for publication from the person concerned, or from a legal guardian.

Authors who analyze existing datasets cite the original data source, follow the conditions of use set by the data provider, acknowledge the data creators and explain how readers can obtain the same data.

A manuscript that reproduces figures, tables or substantial text published elsewhere needs written permission from the copyright holder, usually the original publisher, unless the license under which it was published already allows the reuse. Authors supply the permission with the submission and give the source in the caption, for example "Adapted with permission from [citation]". Material published under CC BY, for example, may be reused with attribution and no further permission, with the source and license given in the caption.

JE articles are published under CC BY 4.0, so they can be reused without asking permission, provided they are credited as set out on the Copyright and License page.

Supplementary files, such as videos, time-lapse series, tables and code, are cited in the text, supplied in open and widely readable formats, and described in a legend. They are published with the article under the same license.

For questions about data sharing or permissions, write to the editorial office at info@openaccesspub.org.