International Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases – Data Archiving Permissions

Comprehensive policies ensuring research data preservation, accessibility, and responsible sharing practices for STI research.

All manuscripts submitted to IJSTD must include a Data Availability Statement describing how readers can access the data underlying published findings. This statement appears in the published article and should provide specific information about data location, access procedures, and any restrictions that apply. Authors should select the most open sharing option consistent with ethical and legal constraints applicable to their specific research.

Acceptable data availability options include deposit in recognized public repositories with unrestricted access, deposit in controlled-access repositories requiring registration or data use agreements, availability upon reasonable request from qualified researchers, and restricted availability due to privacy or consent limitations. The statement should be sufficiently detailed that readers understand exactly how to obtain data access.

Data sharing expectations vary based on research methodology and the nature of data collected. Laboratory studies generating sequence data should deposit sequences in GenBank or equivalent databases. Clinical trial data should be shared in accordance with ICMJE requirements and applicable regulations. Survey and epidemiological data should be shared to the extent consistent with informed consent and privacy protections.

Qualitative research data including interview transcripts and focus group recordings raise unique privacy considerations and may require greater restrictions on sharing. Authors should describe data availability clearly while explaining any limitations. Mixed methods studies should address quantitative and qualitative data components separately as appropriate.

IJSTD supports author self-archiving rights consistent with our open access publishing model. Authors retain copyright to their published work and may share published articles through personal websites, institutional repositories, subject repositories such as PubMed Central, academic social networks, and other platforms immediately upon publication without embargo periods. Proper citation to the published IJSTD version is required.

Authors may also share preprint versions of manuscripts prior to acceptance and throughout the peer review process. We encourage posting preprints to established servers such as medRxiv, bioRxiv, or SSRN to accelerate knowledge dissemination particularly for time-sensitive public health findings. Preprints should be updated with final publication details upon article acceptance.

Authors should consider long-term data preservation beyond immediate sharing requirements. Established repositories provide professional curation and commitment to multi-decade preservation. Institutional data archives may offer appropriate preservation services for sensitive data requiring access controls. Authors should ensure data remain accessible throughout the expected useful life of the published research.

For studies generating large or complex datasets, authors should include documentation enabling future users to understand and appropriately analyze shared data. This includes codebooks defining variables, data dictionaries explaining coding schemes, and methodological documentation describing data collection and processing procedures.