Last Updated: December 12, 2024
For all manuscripts submitted to American Journal of Biomedicine, the authors must make provisions for all materials described in their manuscript, including all relevant raw data, to be freely available to any researchers who may wish to reuse or reanalyze them. If any conclusions made in the paper depend on a particular, dataset, then this dataset must be made available to the readers (unless it is already provided as part of the submitted article).
American Journal of Biomedicine follows the guidance set out by COPE. Authors are encouraged to ensure their manuscript adheres to the FAIR principles (https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/), including the fundamental principles of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability.
- Findable: Does the manuscript clearly state where the raw data may be found? The manuscript must include a data availability statement. If the data are available from the correspondence author, their details must be correct at the time of manuscript publication.
- Accessible: Are the datasets freely available to other researchers? Raw data must be made available to other researchers, at the very least, upon reasonable request. For example, for public datasets requiring deposition in curated databases, the data should not be password-protected (except under exceptional cases, such as identifiable data) and must be accessible, free of charge, to any interested reader.
- Interoperability: Are the raw data easily interpretable by other, interested researchers? For example, is the language used suitable to the audience? Is the format machine-readable?
- Reusability: Can the data easily be re-analyzed by other researchers who may wish to reuse them? For example, did the authors ensure that the reuse of the data would involve the use of user-friendly software or tools?
Data availability statements
‘All manuscripts should include a statement outlining to fellow researchers where the data generated during their study may be found. Authors can use any of the following standard statements (or combination of statements, where applicable).
- For data that are available upon request, the following statement must be used: ‘The data generated in the present study may be requested from the corresponding author’. For publicly available datasets, the authors can state that ‘The data generated in the present study may be found in the (name of database) under accession number (accession number) or at the following URL: (persistent, direct URL to datasets)’. If all the data are included in the manuscript (this includes all experimental repeats for all assays and analyses), then this also can be acknowledged as follows: ‘The data generated in the present study are included in the figures and/or tables of this article’.
- If the authors have a compelling reason to withhold their data then the following sentence should be included: ‘The data generated in the present study are not publicly available due (compelling reason why data are not public) to but may be requested from the corresponding author’. In case the manuscript does not contain data generated by the authors (such as review articles) the statement ‘Not applicable’ should be included. If the data are available from a third-party, then the following statement must be included: ‘The data generated in the present study may be requested from (name of third party), due to (reason why the data are available from third-party)’.
Public/previously published datasets
If public datasets are included in the study, the authors must include the following information in the ‘Availability of data and materials’ section of the article: the accession number of the dataset, the name of the repository in which it can be found, and a direct URL for the dataset. Authors who are unable to share their data must disclose this and provide a compelling explanation as to why the data are unavailable.
For large sequencing or proteomics datasets
Authors are required to deposit large datasets (such as high-throughput sequencing, X-ray crystallography and microarray datasets) in public curated repositories, unless there is a compelling reason for them not to do so (such as protection of patient privacy, pending or approved patents, biosecurity reasons or any other legislation prohibiting public data sharing). Authors who are unable to share their data must disclose this at submission on our online submission system. Please note that a manuscript may be rejected if the Editor considers that the manuscript does not comply with our data sharing policies, and the authors have failed to provide a compelling reason to withhold their data and materials.
The datasets must be described in the ‘Availability of data and materials’ section of the manuscript, and this must include the accession number of the dataset, the name of the repository in which it can be found, and a direct URL for the dataset. Although the choice of database is at the authors' discretion, we require the data to be freely available to readers upon publication of the manuscript. This means the data should not be embargoed or otherwise password-protected at the time of publication (unless there is a specific reason for that to be the case).