Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy

Research Transparency & Reproducibility

Data Sharing & Accessibility Policy

Mercatura: Journal of Marketing supports responsible data sharing, research transparency, reproducibility, and FAIR data practices.

TRANSPARENCY REPRODUCIBILITY FAIR DATA

The journal encourages authors to make research data supporting their findings available whenever ethically, legally, and practically possible. Data sharing must respect participant privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property, contractual obligations, and applicable laws.

1. Data Availability Statement

All research manuscripts must include a Data Availability Statement indicating whether supporting data are available, where they can be accessed, and any applicable conditions or restrictions.

Public Repository
The data supporting the findings of this study are available in [repository name] at [DOI/persistent identifier].
Available on Request
The data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Included in the Article
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary materials.
Restricted Data
The data are not publicly available due to privacy, ethical, legal, commercial, or third-party restrictions.

2. Data Repositories & Documentation

Where data can be shared, authors are encouraged to deposit them in a recognized disciplinary, general-purpose, or institutional repository that provides stable access and, preferably, a persistent identifier such as a DOI.

Appropriate repositories may include Zenodo, Figshare, Harvard Dataverse, Dryad, Open Science Framework (OSF), or a recognized institutional or disciplinary repository.

Data should be provided in appropriate, reusable, and preferably open or machine-readable formats, accompanied by sufficient metadata, variable descriptions, documentation, and methodological information to support interpretation and reuse.

3. Ethical, Legal & Confidential Data

Data sharing must not compromise ethical obligations, participant confidentiality, personal information, commercially sensitive information, intellectual property, or third-party agreements.

✓ De-identify or aggregate personal data where appropriate. ✓ Respect informed consent and ethical approval conditions.
✓ Explain legal or contractual restrictions. ✓ State clearly how restricted data may be accessed, if possible.
Important: Authors are not required to make data publicly available when doing so would violate ethical, legal, privacy, confidentiality, or contractual obligations.

4. Data Citation & FAIR Principles

Shared datasets should be cited appropriately in the manuscript and reference list. Where available, authors should provide the dataset's creator(s), title, repository, year, version, and DOI or other persistent identifier.

F
Findable		 A
Accessible		 I
Interoperable		 R
Reusable

FAIR does not necessarily mean that all data must be completely open. Where access is restricted, authors should provide clear metadata and explain the conditions under which access may be obtained.

5. Editorial Oversight

The Editorial Team may request access to supporting or underlying data when necessary to verify reported results, investigate research-integrity concerns, or assess compliance with this policy.

Inaccurate or misleading data availability statements, unjustified refusal to provide data for editorial verification, or serious inconsistencies between the article and underlying data may result in further editorial review and appropriate action under the journal's publication-ethics and post-publication policies.

Policy Alignment

This policy is informed by the COPE Core Practice on Data and Reproducibility, the COPE–DOAJ–OASPA–WAME Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, the FAIR Guiding Principles, and established international research-data sharing practices.