Data Archiving and Permissions

Data availability statement

Every empirical research manuscript must include a data-availability statement. It explains where the data supporting the results can be found, or the conditions under which they can be accessed when ethics approval or patient consent restricts sharing. Typical statements read:

• Data in a repository: “The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository] at [DOI or URL].”
• Data on request: “The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.”
• Restricted data: “The data are not publicly available because of [ethical, privacy or legal restrictions] and are available from the corresponding author under a data use agreement.”
• Data in the article: “All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this article and its supplementary files.”

Choosing a repository

Data are deposited in a discipline-specific or general-purpose repository that assigns a persistent identifier, such as a DOI or accession number, and supports FAIR-aligned metadata. Examples include:

• General: Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad, Open Science Framework
• Genomic and molecular: GenBank, European Nucleotide Archive, ArrayExpress; give the accession numbers in the manuscript
• Imaging: imaging repositories that accept whole-slide images and photomicrographs, where consent and ethics approval allow

Whole-slide images and photomicrographs

Whole-slide images and photomicrographs can be deposited when appropriate consents exist. Authors remove identifying patient information from all image files and their metadata, including slide labels and file names, before sharing. Digital pathology archives support secondary research and teaching use of diagnostic images.

Code and software

Custom code, statistical analysis scripts, image-analysis pipelines and software used to produce the results are shared where possible, for example through Zenodo, GitHub or GitLab, with version numbers, dependencies and enough documentation to reproduce the analysis. Studies of AI-based diagnostic tools describe the model, the training and validation data, and how the tool can be obtained or evaluated.

Patients and privacy

Data from patients are shared only when this is consistent with the patients’ consent and the ethics approval for the study. Before sharing, authors remove information that could identify a patient, use a controlled-access repository when full de-identification is not possible, and follow applicable data-protection law, such as the GDPR or HIPAA.

Identifiable images or detailed case information are published only with written informed consent for publication from the person concerned, or from a legal guardian.

Secondary data

Authors who analyze existing datasets or archival specimen collections cite the original data source, follow the conditions of use set by the data provider, acknowledge the data creators and explain how readers can obtain the same data.

Permission to reuse published material

A manuscript that reproduces figures, tables or substantial text published elsewhere needs written permission from the copyright holder, usually the original publisher. Authors supply the permission with the submission and give the source in the caption, for example “Adapted with permission from [citation]”. Material published under CC BY needs attribution but usually no permission.

JCDP articles are published under CC BY 4.0, so they can be reused without asking permission, provided they are credited as set out on the Copyright and License page.

Supplementary material

Supplementary files, such as extended tables, protocols, datasets, additional images or video, are welcome. Each file is clearly named, for example “Supplementary_Table_1.xlsx”, and briefly described in the manuscript. Supplementary material is reviewed with the manuscript. For very large files, contact the editorial office before submission.

Questions

For questions about data sharing or permissions, write to the editorial office at [email protected].