Journal requirements

Most journals now require the data underlining your research to be published when you submit a paper. However, what each journal means by publishing the data can be different and policies and guidelines are frequently updated. More recently, most publishers are trying to base their policies on the FAIR principles and they are making an effort to align their requirements.

Many of them now refer to the Coalition for Publishing Data in the Earth and Space Sciences (COPDESS). This provides a common framework to enable the FAIR principles in sharing Earth Science data.

While there might be differences between the policies, you can satisfy them by:

• having well formatted and described data

• publishing your dataset in a trusted repository, ie. a one that follows the FAIR principles: all the choices listed in our publishing options page are trusted.

• add the dataset to the references as you would for a paper

• have a Data Availability Statement - the format of this will change depending on the journal, and it is not always required.

As you still need to know what the specific requirements are, some information on each publishers’ data policy was collected and findings summarised in a list available from the Appendix.