Data Archiving Permissions
Supporting transparent research through open data sharing practices.
Commitment to Research Transparency
Fetal Surgery strongly encourages authors to share research data underlying their publications. Open data practices enhance reproducibility, enable secondary analysis, and accelerate scientific progress in prenatal intervention research. We support data sharing while respecting patient privacy, ethical constraints, and legitimate proprietary interests in maternal-fetal medicine.
Data Sharing Policy
Encouraged Sharing
Authors are encouraged to deposit anonymized research data in recognized repositories at manuscript submission. Data availability statements are required for all original research articles indicating where data can be accessed.
Privacy Protection
Patient data from fetal surgery cases must be fully de-identified before sharing. Remove all identifying information including dates, locations, and unique clinical characteristics that could enable patient identification.
Ethical Compliance
Data sharing must comply with institutional review board approvals and informed consent agreements. Authors should verify that consent documents permit data sharing for research purposes before deposit.
Controlled Access
Sensitive clinical data may be shared through controlled access repositories requiring researcher registration and data use agreements protecting patient interests while enabling legitimate research.
Recommended Repositories
General Repositories
- Zenodo (CERN-hosted)
- Figshare
- Dryad Digital Repository
- Open Science Framework
Medical Data Archives
- PhysioNet for clinical data
- NIMH Data Archive
- dbGaP for genetic data
- Institutional repositories
Imaging Archives
- XNAT imaging platforms
- LORIS neuroimaging
- Cancer Imaging Archive
- Institutional PACS exports
Data Availability Statement: All original research articles must include a Data Availability Statement describing how readers can access underlying data. Acceptable statements include repository links with DOI, controlled access request procedures, or explanation of restrictions preventing data sharing due to ethical or legal constraints.
Author Rights
Authors retain ownership of their research data. By sharing data in public repositories, authors license others to use data for research purposes while retaining intellectual property rights. Data citations should reference both the original publication and the repository deposit record.
We recognize that some fetal surgery data cannot be shared due to patient privacy concerns, small sample sizes enabling identification, or ongoing longitudinal studies. Authors should clearly explain such restrictions in their data availability statements while committing to sharing whenever possible.
