Data Availability

The International Journal of Sexual Health, Fertility and Reproductive Medicine is committed to promoting transparency, reproducibility, and responsible research practices. Authors are encouraged to provide clear information about the availability of data and research materials supporting the findings presented in their manuscripts.

1. Data Availability Statement

Authors should include a Data Availability Statement where applicable. The statement should clearly indicate whether the data supporting the research are publicly available, available upon reasonable request, or subject to restrictions.

Examples include:

  • Publicly available data:
    “The data supporting the findings of this study are available in a publicly accessible repository.”

  • Available upon reasonable request:
    “The datasets generated and/or analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.”

  • Restricted data:
    “The data are not publicly available due to ethical, privacy, confidentiality, or legal restrictions.”

  • No applicable data:
    “Data availability is not applicable to this study because no datasets were generated or analyzed.”

2. Data Sharing

Authors are encouraged to share relevant datasets, research materials, software, codes, clinical data, reproductive health data, analytical results, or other supporting resources whenever reasonably possible.

Shared materials should be appropriately documented so that other researchers can understand and, where appropriate, reproduce the reported research.

3. Sensitive or Confidential Data

Data involving human participants, patient information, sexual health information, reproductive health records, genetic information, confidential clinical information, unpublished research, or other sensitive materials may be subject to access restrictions.

Authors must ensure that data sharing complies with applicable:

  • Ethical requirements

  • Privacy and confidentiality obligations

  • Institutional policies

  • Legal requirements

  • Intellectual property rights

4. Data Integrity

Authors are responsible for ensuring that submitted and shared research data are accurate, reliable, and appropriately documented.

Data must not be fabricated, falsified, manipulated, or selectively presented in a misleading manner.

5. Ethical Considerations

Where research involves human participants, animals, clinical samples, reproductive tissues, biological materials, genetic information, or other ethically sensitive information, authors must follow applicable ethical requirements when collecting, storing, using, and sharing research data.

Particular care should be taken to protect the privacy, confidentiality, dignity, and rights of research participants.

6. Data Availability Upon Request

When datasets cannot be deposited in a public repository but can reasonably be shared, authors may make them available to qualified researchers upon reasonable request, subject to applicable ethical, legal, privacy, confidentiality, and intellectual property restrictions.

7. Editorial Requests

The editorial team may request access to supporting data or research materials when necessary to assess the validity, transparency, or reproducibility of submitted or published research.

Any such request should be handled in accordance with applicable ethical, privacy, confidentiality, and legal requirements.

8. Author Responsibility

Authors are responsible for providing an accurate Data Availability Statement and ensuring that any data or research materials made available are consistent with the statements provided in the manuscript.