Following the data access and research transparency (DART) approach as explained in the editorial by Beugelsdijk, van Witteloostuijn, and Meyer (JIBS, 2020), JIBS expects authors to take account of the following upon submitting their manuscript:
1. JIBS is the official publication of the Academy of International Business. Authors who wish to submit work for consideration are required to comply with the AIB Journals Code of Ethics. As spelled out in clauses 3.6, 3.5.2., and 3.5.3, at manuscript submission an author must inform the editor of (1) all prior use of any data, whether in part or whole, be it by a single author or with any number of co-authors, and (2) how the manuscript makes a contribution over and above any earlier published work in which the data were used—for example, through the use of different theories or methodologies. The required information may be provided in a cover letter for the editor’s eyes only. Failure to provide such information may be grounds for manuscript rejection.
2. It will be normal practice for JIBS handling Editors to ask, on their own or at the request of a reviewer, for supplementary information such as research documents and raw output files—although not the actual raw data. An editor might request additional descriptive statistics or robustness tests, programming codes used for running regressions, output files from statistical analysis software, or questionnaires in their original language. Authors will have the option of sharing the data and/or raw output files with only the editor and only if/when it is requested for a revision. In the rare case that the editor needs to delegate checking the data, a non-anonymous consulting editor could take on this role. Authors should disclose in their paper the original language in which research was undertaken (this specifically applies to qualitative research), and describe the steps they have taken to maintain its meaning when reporting it in English. Again, failure to comply may be grounds for manuscript rejection. Editors who request and receive access to an author’s raw output files will not use this information in their own work or share it with others.
3. Authors will be required to include in their submission a data sharing “comply or explain” statement. There are a number of reasons to delay making data fully available, and reasons why full compliance is not achievable, or even desirable (as explained in detail below). Some reasons are spelled out in the statement, and it is possible to add others:
a. I will make the data fully available upon acceptance
b. I will make the data fully available after an embargo period (maximum five years)
c. I will not make the data fully available due to
i) Protection of personal data of research subjects
ii)Third-party property rights
iii) National security
iv) Other reasons (please specify)
If an author has reasons to “opt out” other than i, ii, or iii, these will need to be spelled out. Assuming a manuscript is accepted for publication, the author will be asked to confirm the intentions declared in the statement filed at the time of submission. Each article published in JIBS, will be followed by an editorial note that informs readers of the extent to which data are available, and the reasons for less than full availability. Authors who make their data fully available will be asked to store these in a reputable data repository, and to provide information on how to access these data. Information on how to access data, including its Digital Object Identifier (DOI), will appear below the article, and enable citations to the dataset.”
JIBS encourages authors to share the data supporting the results in their study by archiving them in a stable and public data repository. An overview of stable and permanent repositories can be found in the JIBS editorial on DART. For reasons explained in the editorial, personal websites and most departmental websites do not qualify as repositories.
