T&F Data Sharing Policy

Data Sharing

Data sharing enables greater transparency in scholarly communications, increases the reproducibility of experimental results and hastens the pace of important discoveries. When data generated as a result of academic research is well managed and shared openly, it enables ideas to flourish and allows for stronger, more rigorous academic debate. At Taylor & Francis, we will, wherever possible, support the sharing of data generated during the course of a research project, regardless of discipline, content or publication format.

Why data sharing?

  • A healthy open research ecosphere requires research data to be easily accessed and shared. The potential for advances in research and scientific discovery are significantly increased when research transparency is encouraged and supported.
  • Wide availability of associated research data has the potential to reinforce and underpin experimental reproducibility.
  • Progressive data sharing allows researchers to build on the results of others and collaborate across geographies and subject areas, thereby supporting the scientific method. It also promotes interdisciplinary research and collaboration, increasing the likelihood of research data being used in novel and unexpected ways.
  • Studies have shown that researchers who share their data openly may increase the chances of their research being cited by up to 25%.
  • Some governments and funders mandate the formulation of data management plans to facilitate data sharing for all publicly funded research. Research funders increasingly require data sharing as a core part of their grant conditions.
  • Data sharing can help deliver real-world impact, informing policy-making, producing large-scale economic benefits and hastening technological innovation.

How is Taylor & Francis supporting data sharing?

  • We have a range of progressive policies which enable increased data sharing across all subject disciplines. Our policies align with TOP guidelines and support FAIR principles.
  • All of our in-house journals have adopted (as a minimum) a basic data sharing policy, which encourages authors to share data where content privacy concerns are upheld. We are working with our journals and partners to adopt the most appropriate data policy for their subject area.
  • We have adopted a basic data sharing policy applying to all new book content from April 2021, recommending that our authors share their data where this does not violate subject privacy concerns. Our book authors are further encouraged to cite data and provide a data availability statement for inclusion in their publication.
  • Our most progressive policies, employed across a number of our Earth, Space and Environmental Sciences journals, mandate data sharing under an open licence, allowing re-use by any third party for any lawful purpose.
  • Data associated with humanities research is substantiated, collated and managed differently to scientific data. We are committed to supporting researchers in the humanities sector to share information and sources to increase transparency, rigour and impact.
  • We provide resources which clearly communicate our journal-level data sharing policies and practices to support authors and make the task of sharing and accessing data as simple as possible.
  • We have partnered with several leading scholarly repositories, including ScholeXplorer and Figshare to promote the findability, access and reuse of research data.
  • We are helping to shape community standards around data sharing within scholarly communications through participation in several leading cross-community initiatives, including association with the Centre for Open Science, the Research Data Alliance, Force11, STM Research Data Programme and its Humanities sub group, and Metadata 2020.
  • Our goal is to encourage researchers to publish their data notes alongside their articles, in order to support improved findability, accessibility and reproducibility of data associated with conventional publication formats. We are providing a growing number of venues for the publication of these data notes, including selected data-specific journals, as well as our F1000 platforms.
  • We have created infrastructure to support the sharing of data and introduced technology to clearly and consistently link these data to published journal articles.

Partnering with F1000 

  • F1000, part of the Taylor & Francis Group, is one of the academic publishing industry’s open research pioneers.
  • Since 2013, F1000 has been providing publishing services that include a mandatory FAIR data policy and support all of their authors in making their data open.
  • Taylor & Francis and F1000 are continuously collaborating to share experiences around how to deliver open data policies and services that work best for authors working across a diversity of subject fields and dealing with a range of data formats and types.  
  • Further details on F1000’s commitments to open data can be found here.

Further Resources