Hi everyone,
Here in St Andrews we are having an issue with an ACS journal with regards to the Data Access Statement in a manuscript.
In summary, one of our researchers submitted an EPSRC funded manuscript with the following sentence in the Supporting Information paragraph:
“The research data supporting this publication can be accessed at [DOI]”
The Journal was not happy and asked our researcher to remove the sentence and include the “material” in a Word document and submit it as a traditional SI. This however is not possible as the raw data simply cannot be put into a word document, given the nature of the files. They also wrote the following instructions:
“Supporting Information Available:
Description of the material included.
This material is available free of charge via the Internet http://pubs.acs.org. (no other URL is acceptable).”
The concerning bit here is “no other URL is acceptable” and theirs does not really meet the definition of unique (as per EPSRC expectations).
We are trying to make the process as smooth as possible for our researchers but these episodes do not help the cause.
Maybe the sentence could be moved among the references or in the acknowledgements. This, however, would make the Data Access Statement less evident to the reader (or EPSRC themselves)…
We contacted the journal explaining the situation but in the meantime we would really like to know what you think and if you have ever had such an experience with a publisher. If so, how did you solve it?
Any advice welcome!
Best wishes,
Federica
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