Authors are encouraged to include a Data Availability Statement indicating where supporting research data may be accessed or explaining why the data cannot be made publicly available.
Research data must be authentic and accurately represented. Fabrication, falsification, selective manipulation, or deliberate misrepresentation of research data constitutes a serious research-integrity concern.
Where ethically and legally appropriate, authors are encouraged to deposit supporting data in recognized institutional, disciplinary, or general-purpose repositories and provide persistent identifiers or links where available.
Data containing personal identifiers, confidential business information, protected institutional records, or other sensitive information should not be publicly disclosed when disclosure would violate ethical, legal, privacy, contractual, or confidentiality obligations.
Editors may request access to relevant underlying data or supporting documentation when necessary to evaluate the reliability or integrity of a submission. Such requests remain subject to confidentiality and ethical considerations.
Datasets that are publicly available and materially contribute to a manuscript should be appropriately acknowledged or cited according to relevant scholarly conventions.