Data Sharing Policy

TJCSS supports responsible data sharing because access to research data can improve transparency, verification, reproducibility, and future research.

Data sharing must remain consistent with participant consent, privacy, confidentiality, ethical approval, legal requirements, intellectual property rights, and legitimate security concerns.

1. Data Availability Statement

Authors should include a Data Availability Statement in their manuscript.

The statement should explain whether the data are:

  • Publicly available
  • Available in a repository
  • Available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request
  • Restricted because of ethical, legal, privacy, or contractual requirements
  • Owned by a third party
  • Not applicable to the article

2. Recommended Statements

Authors may use one of the following statements where appropriate:

Publicly available data:
The data supporting the findings of this study are available in [repository name] at [permanent link or identifier].

Data available upon request:
The data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request, subject to applicable ethical and privacy restrictions.

Restricted data:
The data are not publicly available because they contain confidential or potentially identifiable participant information. Access may be considered subject to ethical approval and applicable legal requirements.

Third party data:
The data used in this study were obtained from a third party and are subject to access restrictions. Requests should be directed to the relevant data owner.

No new data:
No new data were created or analysed in this study. Data sharing is therefore not applicable.

3. Suitable Repositories

Where possible, authors should use a recognized institutional, disciplinary, or general research data repository.

The repository should provide:

  • A stable record
  • A persistent link or identifier
  • Clear access conditions
  • Appropriate preservation
  • Information about the dataset
  • Version control where available

Personal cloud storage or temporary file sharing links should not be used as permanent repositories.

4. Materials That May Be Shared

Supporting materials may include:

  • Anonymized datasets
  • Survey instruments
  • Interview guides
  • Questionnaires
  • Coding frameworks
  • Statistical syntax
  • Analysis files
  • Data dictionaries
  • Research protocols
  • Supplementary tables
  • Relevant documentation

5. Qualitative and Sensitive Data

TJCSS recognizes that social science data may contain sensitive, confidential, cultural, political, or identifiable information.

Authors are not required to make data public where sharing would:

  • Violate participant consent
  • Reveal participant identity
  • Create a risk of harm
  • Breach ethical approval
  • Violate a legal or contractual obligation
  • Expose confidential community information
  • Threaten personal or national security
  • Infringe third party rights

In such cases, authors must explain the restriction in the Data Availability Statement.

6. Anonymization

Before sharing human participant data, authors should remove or reduce identifying information.

Anonymization should consider both direct identifiers and combinations of details that could reveal a participant’s identity.

7. Data Citation

Datasets used in the research should be cited where possible.

A data citation should include:

  • Creator or responsible organization
  • Dataset title
  • Year
  • Repository
  • Version, where relevant
  • Permanent link or identifier

8. Data Integrity

Authors must preserve the original meaning and structure of shared data. Changes made during cleaning, coding, anonymization, or analysis should be documented.

Authors must not fabricate, falsify, selectively omit, or improperly manipulate data.

9. Data Retention

Authors should retain research data and relevant records for a reasonable period according to institutional, ethical, legal, and disciplinary requirements.

The journal may request supporting data where concerns arise about the accuracy or integrity of a submitted or published article.

10. Refusal or Failure to Provide Data

An author’s inability to share restricted or confidential data will not automatically be treated as misconduct.

However, refusal to provide reasonable supporting information during an investigation may affect the journal’s assessment of the reliability of the work.