Overview   Leadership Commitment Statement Author Guidelines Resources

Implementation guidelines for publishers:  

1.   Review your journal’s current guidelines

2.   Add the necessary text to cover all the topics listed below. 

 The text does not need to be exact as long as the language is there for what is required and the same emphasis is used. The main goal is for the researcher to have the same expectation from each journal.  

All publishers who are signatories of the Enabling FAIR Data Commitment Statement support trusted repositories that curate research data, software, and physical samples for use by the scientific community. These Author Guidelines for scientific data align the author instructions for the submission of data in the Earth, space, and environmental sciences, for all affiliated publishers. Specifically, these publishers require authors to:

  1. Deposit research data 1 in a FAIR-aligned repository 2, with a preference for those that explicitly follow the FAIR Data Principles and demonstrate compliance with international standards for data repositories, (e.g. CoreTrustSeal). Supplements to articles must not be used as an archive for data.
  2. Cite and link to the data in the article, following the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles and ESIP Guidelines, using the unique, resolvable, and persistent identifiers provided by the repository in which the data are archived. In particular:
    • Citations should appear in the body of the article with a corresponding reference in the reference list.
    • Citations should include persistent identifiers in well-formed references to data and software allowing that information to be tracked in global information systems for impact, integrity, and innovation (see Scholix).
    • Citations should include software used in the research following the FORCE11 Software Citation Principles, which recommends a similar depositing of the software in an archival repository, and citation/references that include the persistent identifiers provided by the repository.
  3. Include a Data Availability Statement describing how the data underlying the findings of their article can be accessed and reused.
    • In special cases, where data access is restricted, authors are required to mention these restrictions in the Data Availability Statement provided with the article. Such restrictions might be determined by applicable laws, university and research institution policies, funder terms, privacy, intellectual property and licensing agreements, and the ethical context of your research.
    • If the data cannot be made open, it should still be preserved in a FAIR-compliant repository with appropriate access and controls in place. Repositories that provide appropriate access controls can be found here.
  4. Provide unrestricted access to all data and materials underlying reported findings for which ethical or legal constraints do not apply. These restrictions can include:
    • Data Disclosure Risks. If there are possible data disclosure risks (the data pose privacy, confidentiality, or legal concerns, e.g., where data might reveal the identity or location of participants), the authors must specify that data are available on request in the Data Availability Statement, and identify the group to which requests should be submitted. The reasons for restrictions on public data deposition must also be specified. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.
    • Data made available by a third party that is not located in a FAIR-aligned repository and without a persistent identifier. We consider third-party data to be data that can not be legally distributed by the authors. Authors should share any data specific to their analysis that they can legally distribute. If an author does not have the rights to distribute the data, they must include all necessary contact information in the Data Availability Statement to gain access to the relevant data. If permission is required to use a third-party data set, authors must include the third-party source and verification of permission in the Data Availability Statement, as well as provide proper acknowledgment in the article. Authors are asked to submit information from the data owner that data will be available post-publication, in the same manner as that by which the authors obtained the data.
  1. By ‘research data’ we mean “the recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as necessary to validate research findings, but not any of the following: preliminary analyses, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer reviews, or communications with colleagues. This “recorded” material excludes physical objects (e.g., laboratory samples). Research data also do not include: (i) Trade secrets, commercial information, materials necessary to be held confidential by a researcher until they are published, or similar information which is protected under law; and (ii) Personnel and medical information and similar information the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, such as information that could be used to identify a particular person in a research study.”, Uniform Guidance A-81, section 200.315, effective December 26, 2013.
  2. A tool to assist in identifying FAIR-aligned repositories is available from DataCite/re3data.org