Data Sharing & Reproducibility Policy

Terra Alimentaria is committed to the principles of Open Science and research reproducibility. In alignment with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines, we strongly encourage authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, wherever ethically and legally possible.

1. Data Availability Statement (Mandatory)

To promote transparency, all manuscripts submitted to Terra Alimentaria must include a Data Availability Statement in the Declarations section. This statement must detail whether the data used to support the research findings are publicly available, and if so, exactly where and how they can be accessed.

• If data are in a public repository, the statement must include the repository name and a permanent identifier (e.g., DOI or accession number).
• If data cannot be shared publicly, the statement must clearly explain the ethical, legal, or commercial restrictions preventing data sharing.
• If the study did not report any new data, this must also be explicitly stated.

(Please see our Author Guidelines for exact templates of Data Availability Statements).

2. Recommended Data Repositories

We strongly recommend that authors deposit their raw datasets, statistical scripts (e.g., R, Python), and supplementary media in recognized, globally accessible data repositories that mint unique DOIs for datasets. Acceptable repositories include, but are not limited to:

• General Repositories: Mendeley Data, Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad.
• Specialized Repositories: GenBank (for nucleotide sequences), Protein Data Bank (PDB), or specific institutional repositories.

Note: Uploading large raw datasets as "Supplementary Files" directly into the OJS platform is discouraged. Please use external repositories and link them in the manuscript.

3. Exceptions to Data Sharing

Terra Alimentaria recognizes that full data sharing is not always possible. Exceptions are permitted under the following circumstances:

• Human Privacy and Ethics: Data involving human subjects (e.g., clinical trials or specific sensory evaluations) must be anonymized. If anonymization cannot fully protect participant privacy, the data should not be shared publicly.
• Proprietary Data: Data owned by a third-party commercial entity that restricts publication.

In these cases, authors must state in their Data Availability Statement that the data are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author, subject to ethical or non-disclosure agreements.