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Publication ethics policies

Overview Artificial intelligence policy Authorship guidelines Citation manipulation policy Commentaries, critiques and responses Complaints and appeals Corrections and retractions policy Declaration of conflicting interests Disclaimers Ethics & responsibility Ethics approval and informed consent statements Funding statements Identifying images and information policy Prior publication Request for anonymity Research data sharing policies Simultaneous submissions policy Special collections at Sage

Publication ethics policies

Research data sharing policies

Sage supports the principles of open research and scholarship and encourages authors to share their research data in openly available repositories once their article is accepted for publication. Sage supports the FAIR principles of research data sharing and encourage authors to submit data availability statements where relevant, regardless of journal requirements.

What is covered by the Research Data Policy?

The Research Data Policy at Sage covers any data related to research submissions that may be required to reproduce or validate findings presented. Some of our journals require the data underlying the submission to be shared in a publicly available repository upon publication. Note, that some journals may require you to submit the data underlying your research findings to the journal during the peer review process. Please ensure you have reviewed the journal’s manuscript submission guidelines to confirm specific requirements.

This policy does not cover personal identifying data, data covered by a license or other forms of legally protected data sources. For our policy on identifying images and data, please refer to: Identifying images and information policy

Data repositories

The preferred mechanism for sharing research data is via data repositories. Authors can use Repository Finder, FAIRsharing, and re3data.org to search for a suitable repository. Research data should be submitted to discipline-specific, community-recognised repositories, or to general-purpose repositories, if no suitable community resource is available. We encourage authors to select a data repository that issues a persistent identifier, preferably a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), and has established a robust preservation plan to ensure the data is preserved in perpetuity.

If you share your research data on a repository please provide a URL link to your research data in your manuscript file under the heading ‘Data Availability Statement’, this URL link will be added to your article on publication. For more information, please go to What is a Data Availability Statement and how do I write and submit one?

Data citation

Where datasets are hosted in public repositories that provide datasets with Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), we encourage these datasets to be formally cited in reference lists. Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style.

DataCite recommended format for data citation is as follows:

Creator (PublicationYear). Title. Publisher. Identifier (if available)

Data Licensing

Sage encourages authors to adopt an open access license that maximizes the potential for reuse. This license is usually preferred for research data (e.g., CC0, CC BY or equivalent).

Where research data is held in repositories, the choice of license may be determined by the terms of the repository. Some journals or funders may mandate that authors make their data freely accessible to the public under a specific open access license. Authors must check funder requirements for research data sharing prior to submission. The publisher does not claim copyright over data submitted to repositories.

What is a Data Availability Statement and how do I write and submit one?

A Data Availability Statement (DAS) should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study. Where research data are not publicly available, this must be stated along with details of how data access may be requested. A DAS must take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple types of research data):

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on request.
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on request.
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].

In most cases authors will be prompted to include a DAS as part of the online submission process to their chosen journal. If you are not, please include the DAS in your manuscript file under the heading ‘Data Availability Statement’ as part of the end matter of your article.

I am submitting to a double anonymize peer review journal, what do I do with my data?

If the journal you are submitting to uses double anonymize peer review and requires links to the data to be shared at submission, the data should be deposited in a repository that preserves your anonymity by anonymizing the authors’ names. The data can then be viewed anonymously during the peer review process.

Figshare is a repository that can be used to generate a ‘private sharing link’ for free which can be sent via email, and which you can add to your manuscript. The recipient can then access that data without having a Figshare account, and this link anonymizes the data for reviewers. These links expire after one year and should not be cited in publications.

What are Open Science Framework Open Practice Badges?

To promote transparency and reproducibility, the Open Science Framework (OSF) introduced badges that can be added to articles to indicate to readers: (1) if the paper has open data (2) if the paper has open materials and (3) if the study was preregistered. Authors can be awarded any, or all, of the three badges as long as they meet set criteria. Badges are visible on the article and on the table of contents, both online and (optionally) in print.

Open Data: All digitally shareable data necessary to reproduce the reported results have been made available in a public, open access repository.
Open Materials: All digitally shareable materials necessary to reproduce the reported methodology have been made available in a public, open-access repository.
Preregistered: The design and analysis plan for the reported research were preregistered in a public, open-access repository. TC (Transparent Changes) indicates that the analysis plan was altered but the preregistered analyses and rationale for change have been provided; DE (Data Exist) indicates that registration postdates realization of the outcomes but predates analysis. These will be denoted with superscript letters after the badge.

Some Sage journals use badges to demonstrate compliance with Open Data policies; please refer to individual journal manuscript guidelines. For more information on the criteria for these badges please refer to the Open Science Framework website.

FAQs

Which is research data?

Research data includes all the data generated, or utilized or analysed as part of your research that is required to validate the findings presented. This may be “primary data” generated by authors during their research or “secondary data” which often includes the re-analyses of published data.

What type of data should I be sharing?

Authors should share the data underlying the submission’s results and findings if they have generated these data as part of the study. This may include the primary data underlying tables, graphs, charts, maps, code used to generate any figures or graphs.

What types of data should I not be sharing?

In some cases, research articles are based on data analyses but not data generation. Please ensure you have permission from the data owners before you share their data, or alternatively please add a link to the dataset within the methods section of your article for transparency or the Data Accessibility Statement, as applicable. It may be inappropriate to share datasets that you have gained access to but are not available for public access. Please ensure you have checked for any restrictions before sharing the dataset.

For research involving participants, or sensitive data, authors should exercise caution before sharing confidential, sensitive or otherwise identifying data. If participants have not provided consent to sharing their sensitive or private information, it may be appropriate to deposit these data with your institution and provide details on how others may be able to access them in future within the methods section or the Data Accessibility Statement, as applicable. Please refer to our policy on identifying images and data here: Identifying images and information policy.

When should I be sharing these data?

A reviewer or Editor may request to see your datasets if appropriate, during peer review, regardless of whether the journal requires you to submit your data in a public repository. We encourage authors to comply with these requests for efficient and effective peer review.

Some Sage journals will ask authors to submit their datasets into a repository after acceptance and prior to publication.

On occasion, Sage or the Journal Editor may request authors to provide the raw, unedited, original files underlying published images or raw data underlying the figures, charts, graphs after the publication of an article, if a concern is raised to the attention of the Journal and/or Publisher that requires the examination of the research data.

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