The open exchange of information and ideas is critical to scientific progress and ACS’ mission of improving people’s lives through the transforming power of chemistry. ACS Publications’ portfolio of journals offer the highest levels of rigor in the review and publication of scientific articles and research data. Transparency and the open availability of research data are essential to enhancing both scientific progress and the public trust of those research results.
ACS strongly endorses The FAIR Data Principles and believes that where ethically and legally feasible, all research data should be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. ACS supports the Center for Open Science’s Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles, and the STM Brussels Declaration. ACS is a member of the Research Data Alliance. Through engagement with these community initiatives, we strive to promote best practices in research data availability and to bring those best practices to its community of researchers and journal authors to help improve the execution, communication, and reproducibility of science.
Open availability of research data offers the following benefits:
Where ethically and legally feasible, all ACS journals strongly encourage authors to make the research data underlying their articles publicly available at the time of publication. For the purposes of this policy, research data is defined as materials and information used in the experiments that enable the validation of the conclusions drawn in the article. This includes primary data produced by the authors for the study being reported, secondary data reused or analyzed by the authors for the study, and any other materials necessary to reproduce or replicate the results. To ensure data accessibility, we encourage the use of open licenses for reuse of data, such as Creative Commons CC BY. You can learn more about standard reuse licenses at the Open Access Licensing Options page on the ACS Publications website.
Our data policy is deployed at one of the four levels described below. Each ACS journal will independently determine the level of policy required that reflects the needs of their specific communities. Because of the diversity of research data and the many field-specific differences, each journal may also have field-specific requirements for the open availability of particular data types, and authors should refer to the specific journal’s Author Guidelines for information on data requirements.
Research Data Policy LevelsAll policy levels are subject to potential ethical and legal restrictions on the public release of data (see section below on Exceptions). Authors are advised to check the Author Guidelines for the journal to which they plan to submit for journal-specific data guidelines.
Public data availability encouragedThe journal encourages all authors to publicly share all the data underlying the results reported in the paper, preferably via archiving in an appropriate public repository. Authors are encouraged to provide a Data Availability Statement describing the public availability of the data supporting the article’s conclusions. Publicly available data sets should be cited appropriately.
Public data availability encouraged; Data Availability Statement requiredThe journal encourages all authors to publicly share all the data underlying the results reported in the paper, preferably via archiving in an appropriate public repository. Authors are required to provide a Data Availability Statement describing the public availability of the data supporting the article’s conclusions. Publicly available data sets should be cited appropriately.
Public data availability required; Data Availability Statement requiredThe journal requires , as a condition of publication, all authors to publicly share all the data underlying the results reported in the paper, preferably via archiving in an appropriate public repository. Authors are required to provide a Data Availability Statement describing the public availability of the data supporting the article’s conclusions. Publicly available data sets should be cited appropriately.
Public data availability required and data will be peer-reviewed; Data Availability Statement required
The journal requires , as a condition of publication, all authors to publicly share all the data underlying the results reported in the paper, preferably via archiving in an appropriate public repository. The data will undergo peer review along with the manuscript. Authors are required to provide a Data Availability Statement describing the public availability of the data supporting the article’s conclusions. Publicly available data sets should be cited appropriately.
| POLICY LEVEL | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 | Level 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Encourages Data Sharing | X | X | X | X |
| Encourages Data Availability Statement | X | X | X | X |
| Requires Data Availability Statement | X | X | X | |
| Requires Data Sharing | X | X | ||
| Requires Peer Review of Data | X |
Exceptions to data availability requirements or embargoes delaying data release are available where legal or ethical issues prevent immediate public sharing. This includes data that may reveal personal information of research subjects, data where informed consent for public sharing was not granted, and other legitimate restrictions. In such cases, please contact the relevant journal editorial office to disclose the rationale and request an exception.
A Data Availability Statement should describe the availability of the data underlying the conclusions drawn in the research article and provide a means of access, where applicable, by linking to the data, preferably through the use of a persistent identifier such as a DOI or an Accession Number assigned by a data repository. The Data Availability Statement should be included in the manuscript under the Associated Content heading with the Supporting Information.
Although submission of data as part of an article’s Supporting Information is acceptable, authors are encouraged to submit data in a format that can be most easily accessed and reused. ACS encourages authors to provide machine-readable data and to follow the FAIR Data Principles.