Sharing of the research data containing relevant results of your research paper brings many benefits like it reducing research waste, enables reuse and promotes collaboration. Moreover, greater transparency enhances the trust in research results by allowing these results to be verified independently. Where necessary, the IMJ encourage the authors to share their data to support the publication of their research studies and to interlink data with their published articles. The “Research data” refers to the observations or experiments results that confirm the research findings, including but not limited to raw data, processed data, software, algorithms, protocols, models, methods, and other related materials.

• The IMJ requires that the research data which supports research paper should be made available publicly and openly upon publication of article. If due to data confidentiality or sensitivity, open availability is not possible then it should be shared through a controlled access repository.
• The IMJ strongly encourages that the availability of data relevant to the research article should be made available as soon as possible, wherever ethically and legally possible
• The IMJ requires that clinical trials data should be made available upon reasonable request

As a member of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the IMJ requires that the clinical trials should include a data-sharing plan in the trial’s registration that begin enrolling participants on or after 1st January 2019. The ICMJE’s policy regarding trial registration is explained at www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html. Changes to the plan must be noted in the Data Availability Statement and updated in the registry record (to comply with ICMJE recommendations)

In following this policy, if authors have made their study data accessible in a data repository, they can link their articles directly to the dataset. The authors are required to submit a data-sharing statement form along with their manuscript which includes information regarding the anonymity of data, available additional related documents (e.g., study protocol or a statistical analysis plan), when and for how long the data will be available along with access criteria.

 What data should be shared

The IMJ encourage the researchers to make available as much of the relevant data from their research paper as possible (without compromising confidently) in the form of processed or raw data. Keep in mind that the data should not be shared in any way that could compromise participant privacy or anonymity, and if that would require the authors to break any laws or licensing agreements. If in a particular field, a research community has already established standards for how, what and where the data should be shared, our journal expect authors to meet those criteria’s.

 We consider any files generated by your research as constituting relevant data. Examples of data submitted include, Individual-level deidentified patient data, Statistical codes, spread sheets, Text files, Survey results, Interview transcripts, Images or Videos, Audio files, Imaging and scan files, etc.

To enhance reproducibility and reuse the data should be shared by using the sources file in which they were originally generated, for example:

• Images should be provided as .png, .jpg, .eps, etc.
• Text files should be provided as .docx, .doc, .rft, etc.
• Spreadsheets should be provided as .csv, .xls, .tsv, etc.
• Videos should be provided as .mp4, .avi, .wav, etc.
• Imaging and scan files should be provided in .img, .dcm, hdr, etc.

 How to access data that is available upon request:

Data requesters should do the following:

• Email the corresponding author for the research paper to request the relevant data.
• Give a detailed protocol for the proposed study, including funding and resources of your research your request.
• If appropriate, invite the original author[s] to participate in the re-analysis.
• If a month elapses without a response from the authors, please email the editorial team of IMJ.
• The editorial team will assess the request and if appropriate will encourage the authors or their institution to share the data, although IMJ are not in a position to compel data release or broker agreements.

 How to cite data

• All publicly available data which is used in the manuscript writing should be cited in the text and the reference list – whether they are data generated by the author(s) or by other researchers.
• Data citations should include author(s), title, data repository, the document version (e.g. most recent date modified), the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and should follow IMJ reference style.
• Add [dataset] as a prefix immediately before the reference, so we can properly identify it as a data reference; this identifier will not appear in the published article.

Example:
[dataset] [52] John G, Rai S, Chu T, Tange M. Data from: Steroid induced effects like in coordination between GABAergic and Glutamatergic neurons in the amygdala. Dryad Digital Repository, November 12, 2019. https://doi.org/1i.4081/dryad.k9q7h

Updated February 17, 2022