Is data available on request still accepted anywhere?

At Springer Nature journals it is an allowed disclosure, because their single research data policy makes availability transparent rather than requiring public deposit. Editors and reviewers can still ask for the dataset, and you have to justify any restriction to the handling editor at submission. PLOS journals have not accepted the phrase on its own since their 2014 data policy; there you name a repository or a committee that controls access.

What do I write if my data cannot be shared for privacy reasons?

Name the body that controls access, not yourself. PLOS requires a data access or ethics committee to be listed as the contact and states that the authors cannot be the sole named individuals responsible for access. A workable line reads: data contain identifying participant information and are available on request from the named institutional ethics committee for researchers who meet the criteria for access to confidential data.

Data availability statements: the sentence journals push back on.

Waraq · July 24, 2026 · RULE OF THE WEEK

A data availability statement tells an editor where the data behind your figures live and how a reader reaches them. The wording that passes names a repository and a persistent identifier, for example: "The sequence data are available from the NCBI GenBank repository (accession numbers MN908947 to MN908950)." The phrase many journals now query is "data are available on request," because it names no repository, no identifier, and no one who is obliged to answer.

What does a data availability statement have to assert?

It has to state where the data are and what a third party must do to reach them, in terms someone other than you can act on. A data availability statement is the one or two sentences in the declarations block that report whether the data underlying your results are public, restricted, or held elsewhere.

PLOS sets the content test plainly. The statement must list the name of the repository as well as the DOIs, accession numbers or codes, or other persistent identifiers for all relevant data. So the working question is not whether you are willing to share. It is whether a stranger reading only that sentence could find your dataset. If they cannot, the statement is incomplete, whatever intentions sit behind it.

What wording passes: repository, identifier, and access conditions?

A statement passes when it names the repository, gives the accession number or DOI, and states any condition attached to access. Three shapes cover most first submissions.

Public deposit is the clean case: "All sequence files are available from the GenBank database (accession numbers listed in S1 Table)." The repository is named, the identifier is traceable, and nothing is left to a private exchange.

Data inside the article is the shape that trips people. "All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files" is one of the most common statements submitted to PLOS ONE, and it often fails, because a figure showing a mean or a median usually hides the individual data points the policy asks you to share. If the raw values are not in the file, that sentence is not true, and an editor can see it is not true from the figures themselves.

Timing has a documented workaround. PLOS lets you submit with placeholder language saying accession numbers or DOIs will be supplied after acceptance; the journal office then holds the paper until you send them. You are not blocked from submitting because a repository has not minted an identifier yet.

Why do editors keep querying "data available on request"?

Because the promise rarely gets kept. A 2022 study in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology tested the phrase and found only about 7 percent of authors actually handed over data when their statement said it was available on request. PLOS has not permitted "available on request" on its own since its 2014 data policy.

Springer Nature treats the phrase differently, and the difference is worth knowing before you copy a statement from one journal into another. Under its single research data policy, "available on request" is an allowed disclosure, because that policy exists to make the availability of data transparent rather than to force public deposit. Even there the phrase is not a free pass: reviewers and editors may request the dataset directly, and any restriction on sharing has to be discussed with the handling editor at submission, who can decline a study if the limits are unduly prohibitive. So the same phrase is fine at one publisher and a query at another. Read the target journal's data page rather than reusing a line that cleared a different one. The first-submission checklist is where this belongs on your own list, next to the ethics and funding statements.

What do you write when the data genuinely cannot be shared?

Name the body that controls access, not yourself. Privacy, third-party ownership, and ethics restrictions are all accepted reasons to withhold a public deposit, and journals have wording for each.

The rule editors enforce is about who answers the request. For restricted data, PLOS requires a data access committee or an ethics committee to be named as the contact, and states that the authors cannot be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring access. The reason is practical. An individual author changes institution, loses a laptop, or stops replying; a committee is a standing address. A usable line reads: "Data contain potentially identifying participant information and cannot be shared publicly. De-identified data are available on request from the [Institution] Research Ethics Committee (email) for researchers who meet the criteria for access to confidential data." That statement restricts the data and still tells a reader exactly which door to knock on. Skipping the statement, or leaving a required declaration blank, is one of the gaps a desk editor catches on the first read.

The declarations block: data, funding, and contributions as a set

The data statement rarely travels alone. It sits with the funding disclosure and the author contributions, and an editor reads the three together, so a gap in one stalls the whole file.

Funding has its own placement rule, and it is the opposite of what many authors assume. PLOS states it directly: "Do not include funding sources in the Acknowledgments or anywhere else in the manuscript file; funding information should only be entered in the financial disclosure section of the submission system." The grant that paid for the work does not belong in the Acknowledgments paragraph; it belongs in a field in the portal. Contributions have a parallel form: each author is mapped to named roles, which is the job the CRediT contribution statement does. Treat the block as one task. Draft the data statement, the funding disclosure, and the contribution list in the same sitting, and check each against the journal's own policy page rather than a template. If you would rather have each declaration read against the target journal's rules before you submit, that is the kind of pass Waraq runs.

The through-line across all three is the same standard the data statement started with: say something a third party can act on. A named repository, a grant entered in the right field, a role assigned to a real person. Editors are not asking for more disclosure for its own sake. They are asking for sentences that hold up when someone other than the author tries to use them.