Data paper

Please use the following templates when preparing your Data paper in a Word document:

1. Title page template
2. Manuscript template
3. Dataset metadata template

The information below details the section headings that you should include in your manuscript and what information should be within each section.

Please note that your manuscript must include a 'Declarations' section in the Title page including all of the subheadings (please see below for more information).

Title page

The title page should:

• present a title that focus on the resource, e.g. “Data series from raw meteorological data records collected in forest ecosystem since 1990”. If the resource is closely linked to a specific research paper, then “Data from Paper Title” is appropriate.
• list the full names and institutional addresses for all authors
  • if a collaboration group should be listed as an author, please list the Group name as an author. If you would like the names of the individual members of the Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please include this information in the “Acknowledgements” section in accordance with the instructions below
• indicate the corresponding author
• contain a “Declarations” section (see Template); If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section. (please see below for more information).

Manuscript

For an example of a data paper, see Heym, M., Ruíz-Peinado, R., Del Río, M. et al. Annals of Forest Science (2017) 74: 63. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13595-017-0660-z (the read-only version is available here)

Key message

Provide a brief description of your dataset, the potential uses of the data and provide the link to the dataset (max. 50 words).

Keywords

Three to ten keywords representing the main content of the article.

Main text

Background

(ca. 50-200 words) Briefly outline the broader goals that motivated the collection of the data. Describe the study design, the assay(s) performed, the data generated, any background information needed to put the study in the context of previous work, and provide a reference to relevant publications (if any).

Methods

Provide a detailed description of the methods used to produce the data with techniques, replicates, computations (if any), standards used, etc...; the reader should be able to understand and reproduce the methods and processing.

Access to the data and metadata description

Provide the link to the dataset and the full citation (see the format of dataset citation in the reference section).

Technical validation

(ca. 50-200 words) Present experiments or analyses performed to support the technical quality of the dataset(s).

Reuse potential and limits

(ca. 50-200 words) Summarize the instructions to facilitate the reuse of the datasets. Describe the ways in which the data/sample could be reused. Present all limits and potentialities of the dataset.

References:

All references cited in the text; see the template for formatting

Table captions and tables

Make sure the captions provide all required details to understand the content; provide units and other information.

Figure captions and figures

Make sure the captions provide all required details to understand the content; provide units and other information.

List of abbreviations

If abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations should be provided.

All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations':

• Ethics approval and consent to participate
• Consent for publication
• Availability of data and materials
• Competing interests
• Funding
• Authors' contributions
• Acknowledgements
• Authors' information (optional)

Please see below for details on the information to be included in these sections.

If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section. 

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must:

• include a statement on ethics approval and consent (even where the need for approval was waived)
• include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number if appropriate

Studies involving animals must include a statement on ethics approval and for experimental studies involving client-owned animals, authors must also include a statement on informed consent from the client or owner.

See our editorial policies for more information.

If your manuscript does not report on or involve the use of any animal or human data or tissue, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

Consent for publication

If your manuscript contains any individual person’s data in any form (including any individual details, images or videos), consent for publication must be obtained from that person, or in the case of children, their parent or legal guardian. All presentations of case reports must have consent for publication.

You can use your institutional consent form or our consent form if you prefer. You should not send the form to us on submission, but we may request to see a copy at any stage (including after publication).

See our editorial policies for more information on consent for publication.

If your manuscript does not contain data from any individual person, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

Availability of data and materials

All manuscripts must include an ‘Availability of data and materials’ statement. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. By data we mean the minimal dataset that would be necessary to interpret, replicate and build upon the findings reported in the article. We recognise it is not always possible to share research data publicly, for instance when individual privacy could be compromised, and in such instances data availability should still be stated in the manuscript along with any conditions for access.

Authors are also encouraged to preserve search strings on searchRxiv https://searchrxiv.org/, an archive to support researchers to report, store and share their searches consistently and to enable them to review and re-use existing searches. searchRxiv enables researchers to obtain a digital object identifier (DOI) for their search, allowing it to be cited. 

Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

• The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
• The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
• All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
• The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
• Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
• The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].
• Not applicable. If your manuscript does not contain any data, please state 'Not applicable' in this section.

More examples of template data availability statements, which include examples of openly available and restricted access datasets, are available here.

BioMed Central strongly encourages the citation of any publicly available data on which the conclusions of the paper rely in the manuscript. Data citations should include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI) and should ideally be included in the reference list. Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style. Dataset identifiers including DOIs should be expressed as full URLs. For example:

Hao Z, AghaKouchak A, Nakhjiri N, Farahmand A. Global integrated drought monitoring and prediction system (GIDMaPS) data sets. figshare. 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.853801

With the corresponding text in the Availability of data and materials statement:

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS].^{[Reference number]} 

If you wish to co-submit a data note describing your data to be published in BMC Research Notes, you can do so by visiting our submission portal. Data notes support open data and help authors to comply with funder policies on data sharing. Co-published data notes will be linked to the research article the data support (example).

Competing interests

All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of competing interests. If you are unsure whether you or any of your co-authors have a competing interest please contact the editorial office.

Please use the authors initials to refer to each authors' competing interests in this section.

If you do not have any competing interests, please state "The authors declare that they have no competing interests" in this section.

Funding

All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. If the funder has a specific role in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, this should be declared.

Authors' contributions

The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Guidance and criteria for authorship can be found in our editorial policies.

Please use initials to refer to each author's contribution in this section, for example: "FC analyzed and interpreted the patient data regarding the hematological disease and the transplant. RH performed the histological examination of the kidney, and was a major contributor in writing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript."

Acknowledgements

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of acknowledgements and authorship criteria.

If you do not have anyone to acknowledge, please write "Not applicable" in this section.

Group authorship (for manuscripts involving a collaboration group): if you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration Group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the “Acknowledgements” section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.

Please note that individual names may not be present in the PubMed record at the time a published article is initially included in PubMed as it takes PubMed additional time to code this information.

Authors' information

This section is optional.

You may choose to use this section to include any relevant information about the author(s) that may aid the reader's interpretation of the article, and understand the standpoint of the author(s). This may include details about the authors' qualifications, current positions they hold at institutions or societies, or any other relevant background information. Please refer to authors using their initials. Note this section should not be used to describe any competing interests.

Footnotes

Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables.

Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols.

Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

See General formatting guidelines for information on how to format figures, tables and additional files.