I have an ethical, legal, or commercial concern about sharing my data, what should I do?

Sage research data polices are all subject to ethical and legal considerations.

For example, there is no requirement to publicly share quantitative or qualitative data that could identify a research participant unless participants have consented to data release. Policies also do not require public sharing of other sensitive data, such as the locations of endangered species.

Alternatives to public sharing of sensitive, commercial, or personal data include:

• Deposition of research data in controlled access repositories (examples include Figshare, Zenodo, and OSF)
• Anonymization or deidentification of data before public sharing
• Only sharing metadata about the research data
• Stating the procedures for accessing your research data in your article and managing data access requests from other researchers
• Using hybrid methods, e.g., releasing a redacted dataset for general use but providing access to more sensitive data through a user contract or data enclave.

If you are submitting to a journal that requires data sharing and you have concerns or have an embargo on your data, raise this with the journal editorial office at submission or pre submission stage.