BootcampEPSRC: Data access statements

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The final data management requirement from EPSRC is concerned with making sure that your readers know how to access any data that supports your published research papers. You should include a short ‘data access statement’ in every paper, describing how and on what terms any supporting data may be accessed, or why data is not available. If you have not generated any data in the course of your study - for example, your article is a review of existing literature, or your work is not of a type that generates data - you should still include a statement to make this clear.

The data access statement should usually go in the acknowledgements section of your paper, unless the journal has a specific place for it: for example, a ‘Data Availability’ section.

The specific form of the data access statement will vary depending on how you decide to share data and any restrictions you put in place. If you have been given a DOI or other persistent identifier for your data, this should be included in your data access statement.

The Research Data Service has produced a number of resources to help you construct a compliant data access statement, including an interactive data statement generator, a LaTeX package, and examples from different disciplines:

1. You have written a review paper summarising existing literature. You have not generated any data for this paper yourself. What sort of data access statement should you add to your paper?

None. The paper has no new data, so no statement is required.
Add a statement “Supporting data are available in the following papers…” with a list of all the publications that informed the review.
Add a statement “This study did not generate any new data”.
All papers acknowledging EPSRC funding should have a data access statement. However, for review papers you will already have cited all the relevant data sources in your reference list, so you don’t need to repeat this information in the data availability statement. As you haven’t generated any new data, all you need to do is note this in your data statement.

Summary
As a researcher in receipt of EPSRC funding, you are now expected to take certain actions in order to preserve your research data and make it available to others. These actions fall into three broad categories:

Store data securely
- Ensure that your digital data is stored for at least 10 years after your project ends by storing it in the RDSF during your project and depositing it in a suitable data repository afterwards
- Record details of how to reproduce any physical samples
Grant access to data
- Publish data, or metadata for discovery, within 12 months of generation, or 12 months of project end if there is no clear date of generation
- Include details of any access restrictions in metadata
- Include a data access statement in every paper acknowledging EPSRC funding
Anticipate data-related costs by completing a data management plan and including data-related costs in your budget