Open data

Data has the power to revolutionise and disrupt the way societies are governed for the better. This is especially the case with open data, which is free to access, free to use, and can be shared by anyone. That is why UCL Open: Environment strongly encourages all authors to make all data on which the conclusions of their paper rely freely available to readers.

FAIR Data Principles

UCL Open: Environment supports the FAIR Data Principles (https://www.force11.org/group/fairgroup/fairprinciples):

Findable – making research outputs discoverable by the wider academic community and the public;

Accessible – using unique identifiers, metadata and a clear use of language and access protocols;

Interoperable – applying standards to encode and exchange data and metadata;

Reusable – enabling the repurposing of research outputs to maximise their research potential. 

Data availability statement in your article

Authors must clearly state in their manuscript where their data are made available at time of submission. In circumstances where ethical and legal issues dictate any restrictions on sharing data (including research using personal data), a statement to this effect must be included for clarity. Where a widely established research community expectation for data archiving in public repositories exists, submission to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory. Persistent identifiers (such as DOIs and accession numbers) for relevant data must be provided in the manuscript.

During submission, authors are required to confirm the data availability statement to indicate how fellow researchers can access their software and data and link to data sets in repositories. AUthors will be required to select one of the following statements:

1. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the repository: *
2. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
3. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
4. All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplementary information files).
5. The data that support the findings of this study are available from * 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 *

* You may add a link here to your data sets and/or software at a standard data repository. We also strongly encourage you to cite your data in the reference section according to the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles.

Citing data and data deposit

For support on best practice and how to cite to data already deposited elsewhere, authors are advised to use a free citation generator now available online at https://citation.crosscite.org.

Prior to submission, all authors should ensure that their data are either deposited in publicly available repositories (for example, such as GenBank, TreeBASE, Dryad, the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity or other  general subject suitable long-term and stable public repositories such as Figshare) whenever possible, or have included in the main text for open peer review if appropriate.

UCL authors are encouraged to use the UCL Research Data Repository (please see https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/research-support/research-data-management/ucl-research-data-repository.)

For further information including about FAIR data sharing, all authors can find some useful information about when, where, and how to share data as openly as possible, here https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/research-support/research-data-management/best-practices/how-guides/sharing-data.

Handling sensitive & personal data

Handling sensitive & personal dataIn circumstances where ethical and legal issues dictate, any restrictions on sharing data (including research using personal data) should always be considered when storing and preserving research data. The journal also does not require public sharing of other sensitive data, such as the locations of endangered species. Alternatives to public sharing of sensitive or personal data include:

• Deposition of research data in controlled access repositories.
• Anonymisation or deidentification of data before public sharing.
• Only sharing metadata about the research data.
• Stating the procedures for accessing your research data in your article and managing data access requests from other researchers.

UCL Open: Environment adheres to the UCL Research Data policy statement: ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’ as outlined online at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/research-support/research-data.