JMCHS supports open and responsible data sharing. All research articles must include a Data Availability Statement.

Options for the statement

•     Data are openly available in [repository] at [DOI/URL].

•     Data are included in the article and supplementary files.

•     Data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request, subject to approval by [the ethics committee / data custodian].

•     Data are from a secondary source (e.g., NFHS, DHS, national HMIS) and can be obtained from [custodian] under its access conditions.

•     Data cannot be shared publicly because of participant confidentiality or legal restrictions; reasons are given.

Expectations

•     Share de-identified data where consent and ethics approval allow. Remove direct identifiers and consider indirect identifiers such as small village names, exact GPS coordinates, caste and rare conditions.

•     Share questionnaires, analysis code (e.g., Stata do-files, R scripts) and codebooks to support reproducibility. Recommended repositories include Zenodo, Figshare, Harvard Dataverse and OSF.

•     Data from clinical and community trials must be accompanied by a data sharing statement in line with ICMJE.

•     Respect data sovereignty: data collected from communities and governments should be shared in agreement with local partners and data custodians.

Editors may request raw data during review or after publication. Failure to provide data when concerns are raised may result in rejection, an expression of concern or retraction.