Data access statements, also known as data availability statements, are included in publications to describe where the data associated with the paper is available, and under what conditions the data can be accessed. They are required by many funders and scientific journals as well as the UKRI Common Principles on Research Data.
If you are UKRI funded, there is a requirement that you must supply a data access statement with your article. The UKRI policy on research articles includes the 3 key criteria:
1. UKRI requires immediate open access for peer-reviewed research articles.
2. The open access version of the research article must be published with a CC BY 4.0 licence.
3. All research articles must acknowledge UKRI funding and include a Data Access Statement, even where there are no data associated with the article.
These general principles apply when providing a data access statement:
"All data created during this research are openly available from (Name of repository) at (insert DOI here)."
"All data supporting this study is provided as supplementary information accompanying this paper."
"All data is provided in full in the results section of this paper."
"Due to ethical concerns, the supporting data cannot be made openly available. Further information about the data and condition of access are available (insert DOI here)."
“Data supporting this study are available from (Name of repository) at (insert DOI here).
Access to the data is subject to approval and a data sharing agreement due to (Give reasons why access to the data is restricted).”
"Due to the (commercially, politically, ethically) sensitive nature of the research, no interviewees consented to their data being retained or shared. Additional details relating to other aspects of the data are available from the (Name of repository) at (insert DOI here)."
"In order to protect participant confidentiality, supporting data cannot be made openly available. Further information about the data and conditions for access are available at [Name of Data Repository or Archive] at [DOI]."
"Owing to the sensitive nature of the research, interviewees did not consent to the retention or sharing of their data."
“Data supporting this study cannot be made available due to (Give reasons why the data cannot be shared).”
"Data supporting this publication consists of non-digital samples. They are stored at (department/Queen's University Belfast) and can be made available on request if you can travel to (location of samples)."
"Non-digital data supporting this study are stored by the corresponding author at Queen's University Belfast. Details of how to request access to these data are available from the [Name of Data Repository or Archive] at [DOI]."
"The study reanalysed existing data that are publicly available from (name location) at (DOI or URL). Full details of how data were processed are available at (DOI or URL)."
"This study was a re-analysis of data that are publicly available from the [Name of archive] at [DOI]. Data derived through the re-analysis undertaken in this study are available from the Research Data Archive at Queen's University Belfast at [DOI]."
“No new data were generated or analysed in this study.”
"No new data were created during this study."
Some journals provide a “data access” or “data availability” section. If no such section exists, you can place your statement in the acknowledgements section.
If the above templates are not sufficient please consult this table from Taylor & Francis containing template data access statements that you can use or adapt. This is not an exhaustive list however, and an individual data set might warrant a different type of statement.