Publishing

When preparing for the publication submission process, researchers at Case Western Reserve University will need to finalize several steps: 

• Check the publisher’s guidelines for sharing data when submitting manuscripts, possibly including a data availability statement 
• Create a DOI
• Create an ORCiD ID

Publisher Requirements

It is increasingly common for academic journals to require underlying research data to be made available alongside any published articles. For many publishers, the author/submitter guidelines and instructions should include any relevant data sharing policies and requirements.  

One primary guiding principle in the sharing of data involves ensuring that any data related to published materials be open. Open data means that research data is freely available online, accessible for any user to download, copy, analyze, etc., and has no financial or legal impedances specific to accessing or using the data. Open data is invaluable for accelerating the research process and building a more robust and reliable landscape of information.

The FAIR principles of data sharing (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) provide good guidelines for how researchers should aim to make their data available.

Some examples of publisher requirements from key journals:

• Science’s Data Deposition Policy. Scroll down to the “Data and Materials Availability after Publication” section
• SpringerNature’s Data Sharing Policies. Journal example: Nature’s policy on Availability of data, materials, and methods
• Wiley’s Data Sharing Service
• American Geophysical Union’s Publication Data Policy
• Sage’s data submission guidelines

Data Availability Statements

Some publishers may also require the completion and submission of a data availability statement. While a data citation gives credit for the dataset in question, a data availability statement provides information about where these data may be found and under what conditions they may be accessed. The following examples are broadly applicable:

• Taylor & Francis 
• SpringerNature 
• PLOS 

Resources for journal requirements for data sharing

• Data Sharing and Replication (scroll down to Journal Policies)
• Journal open-data policies

DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers)

One way of ensuring your research data is openly accessible and conforms to the FAIR principles is to assign your datasets DOIs. A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a persistent, unique identifying number for documents published online. DOIs ensure that your data remains discoverable, persistent, and linked to its associated published article. DOIs for datasets can be referenced in publications to facilitate the discoverability and reproducibility of your research.

DOIs can be assigned to datasets by publishing them on digital repositories or platforms like CWRU’s Open Science Framework platform. For information on generating DOIs for your published articles, see DataCite's website and others.

ORCID

Author identifiers, such as ORCID iDs, allow you to reliably and unambiguously connect your name with your work throughout your career, including your published papers, research data, institutional affiliations, or work history.  Author identifiers are helpful in a number of ways:

• Provides a means to distinguish between you and other authors with identical or similar names.
• Links together all of your works even if you have used different names over the course of your career.
• Allows others (grant funders, other researchers, etc.) to find your research output.
• Ensures that your work is clearly attributed to you

The librarians at Kelvin Smith and Cleveland Health Sciences libraries are able to assist and answer questions about setting up an ORCID account. Visit the KSL ORCID Guide or CHSL ORCID Guide to learn more. For questions, email chslreference@case.edu and freedmancenter@case.edu.