Data sharing policies
The guide to understanding our data sharing policies will help you get to grips with the details and the steps you’ll need to take as an author.
Data repositories
A data repository is a storage space for researchers to deposit data sets associated with their research. And if you’re an author seeking to comply with a journal data sharing policy, you’ll need to identify a suitable repository for your data.
Read our guide to choosing a data repository which includes some generalist repositories you may wish to consider.
Community-endorsed public repositories
Where community-endorsed mandates exist for submission of data to public repositories, authors should submit the datasets to the appropriate repositories and provide the accession numbers (where available) in the paper.
Examples of repositories community-endorsed public repositories include:
| Data type | Suggested repositories |
|---|---|
| DNA and RNA sequences | Genbank |
| DNA and RNA sequences | EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (ENA) |
| Gene expression | Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) |
| Gene expression | ArrayExpress |
| Genetic polymorphisms | dbSNP NCBI |
| Genetic polymorphisms | dbVar NCBI |
| Genetic polymorphisms | European Variation Archive (EVA) |
| Linked genotype and phenotype data | dbGAP NCBI |
| Linked genotype and phenotype data | European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA) |
| Protein sequences | Uniprot |
| Proteomics data | PRIDE |
| Proteomics data | PeptideAtlas |
| Metabolomics data | Metabolomics Workbench |
| 3-D printable models | NIH 3D Print Exchange |
| Neuroimaging data | OpenNeuro |
| Neuroimaging data | NeuroVault |
| Macromolecular structures | Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank (BMRB) |
| Macromolecular structures | Electron Microscopy Data Resource (EMDB) |
| Macromolecular structures | Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB) |
| Macromolecular structures | RCSB Protein Data Bank (PDB) |
| Crystallographic data | Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) |
| Crystallographic data | Crystallography Open Database (COD) |
| Earth and environmental science data | PANGAEA |
| Earth and environmental science data | NERC Data Centres |
| Earth and environmental science data | World Data Center for Climate (WDCC) |
| Earth and environmental science data | Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB) |
| Earth and environmental science data | EarthChem |
| High Energy Physics Data | HEPData |
| Archaeology Data | Archaeology Data Service (ADS) |
| Paleontology Data | Paleobiology Database |
| Humanities outputs | CORE (Humanities Commons) |