Open Research Data Sharing Policy in the Journal of Depiction of Health

Starting with the first issue in 2026, the Depiction of Health Journal will require authors to deposit their research data in the Open Data Repository of the Central Library of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. Research shows that open data affects publishers, publishing products (such as journals and articles), and the scientific community. In this editorial, we outline the journal's policy on open sharing of research data and discuss the potential benefits and challenges for three groups: publishers, researchers, and society. A) Journal and Article Publishers Publishers support open data sharing to enhance credibility and transparency, advance open science, and increase the visibility of published articles. Articles published with open data usually receive more citations and are more visible. That is, they have greater social and citation impact. Generative AI access to open data through open repositories is easier and more convenient for queries and interactions, thereby improving visibility. In addition, Best Practice Publication ethics guidelines such as COPE, WAME, and ICMJE provide encouraging and mandatory recommendations on the publication and open sharing of research data. Storing data in a repository makes it easier to accept the article and adhere to the principles of research ethics and FAIR data (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). B) Researchers The impact of open data sharing on researchers and authors is significant in several respects, including increased visibility, transparency, and trust; enabling data reuse; fostering collaboration; and preventing research duplication. C) Society Open data is not only useful for researchers but also for social capital, which provides economic, social, and sustainable growth and development benefits to society, both directly and indirectly, through access, the use of evidence, the identification of disease patterns, and the dissemination of data science, data analysis, and processing. Along with the benefits, there are challenges, such as concerns about plagiarization, misuse of data or copyright infringement protecting the privacy of patients or participants in clinical research, reduced visits to publisher websites due to the dominance of generative artificial intelligence and Chatbots in responding to users' diverse information needs, and providing synthetic summaries such as Google AI Overview. However, many data-sharing repositories offer features for access level categorization and license assignment that reduce these problems. Journal of Depiction of Health, stores original article data in the open data repository of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences Publications. This data repository uses the 3-Clause BSD License. This open data repository is available to registered users for personal use in reproducing science and evidence-based practice. However, the data is not used for commercial purposes, and access is defined by the repository administrator.