Open Data Policy

Revista Científica El Capacho, published by the Universidad Tecnológica del Cibao Oriental (UTECO), holds that the data underpinning a published result are part of the result itself. Sharing them makes claims verifiable, allows the effort invested in producing them to be reused, and prevents needless duplication of research. This policy adopts the FAIR principles —data that are findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable— and is aligned with the open science practices promoted by the SciELO Network.

The journal distinguishes between two obligations of different weight: declaring where the data are, which is mandatory for every article, and depositing them in a public repository, which the journal strongly recommends but does not require. What is not accepted is silence: no article is published without stating what happens to its data.

Data Availability Statement

Every manuscript must include a Data Availability Statement, placed at the end of the text, before the reference list, alongside the funding and conflict of interest statements. The statement is published in full in the final article and is visible to readers.

The statement must indicate, precisely enough for a third party to act on it: which data support the results, where they are held, under what conditions they may be accessed and, where they cannot be shared, why. A statement that merely asserts that data are available without saying where or how will be considered incomplete and returned to the author.

Model Wordings

Authors may adapt whichever of the following wordings fits their work:

a) Data deposited in a public repository. "The data supporting the results of this study are available in [repository name], [URL or DOI of the dataset], under a [licence] licence."

b) Data contained in the article itself. "All data supporting the results of this study are contained within the article and its supplementary materials."

c) Data available on reasoned request. "The data supporting the results of this study are available on reasoned request to [corresponding author and email]. The dataset has not been publicly deposited because [reason]."

d) Data that cannot be shared. "The data supporting the results of this study cannot be shared publicly because [they contain personally identifiable information / they are protected by a confidentiality agreement with the institution that provided them / their release would compromise the safety of the participants]. [State, where applicable, which aggregated or anonymised version is available and where.]"

e) Works without primary data. "This article is a theoretical review and generated no primary data. The sources analysed are fully identified in the reference list."

Deposit in Repositories

The journal recommends depositing data in a public repository that assigns a persistent identifier, preferably a DOI, and that guarantees long-term preservation. Suitable options include disciplinary repositories, the institutional repository of the author's institution, and general-purpose repositories such as Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad, Harvard Dataverse or Mendeley Data. Deposit on personal web pages, private cloud storage services or email attachments does not meet this recommendation, because it guarantees neither permanence nor stable access.

Data should be deposited under an open licence compatible with that of the article —CC BY-NC 4.0— or more permissive, together with the minimum documentation needed to interpret them: description of the variables, units of measurement, collection procedure, and any code or analysis script required to reproduce the results.

Data That Cannot Be Shared

Openness is not an absolute value and yields to ethical and legal obligations. The following are accepted as legitimate reasons for not sharing: the presence of personally identifiable information that cannot be anonymised without destroying the usefulness of the dataset; confidentiality commitments made to participants in the informed consent; restrictions imposed by third-party data owners; the protection of endangered species or of sites whose precise location must be withheld; and legally protected trade secrets.

In such cases the journal expects authors to explore alternatives before declaring the data unavailable: publishing an anonymised or aggregated version, depositing the data in a restricted-access repository with a documented request procedure, or making the analysis code available even if the data are not. The statement must reflect which alternative was adopted.

Data Citation

Deposited datasets, whether the authors' own or those of third parties, must be cited in the text and listed in the references like any other source, following APA style, seventh edition. The citation shall include authorship, year, dataset title, an indication of the resource type in square brackets, the repository and the DOI or URL. Citing data credits those who produced them and makes their reuse traceable.

Supplementary Materials

Where data or supporting materials are published as supplementary material to the article, they shall be uploaded to the platform during submission, in open and non-proprietary formats wherever possible —CSV rather than proprietary spreadsheets, TXT or PDF/A for documents— accompanied by a brief description of each file. These materials are covered by the same licence as the article and are preserved alongside it through LOCKSS and CLOCKSS.

Verification and Responsibilities

The presence and adequacy of the Data Availability Statement are verified during the entry editorial review, before the manuscript is sent to peer reviewers. Reviewers may request access to the data where they consider it necessary to assess the validity of the results, and the editorial team will pass that request on to the author.

The accuracy of the statement is the authors' responsibility. Establishing that a statement is false —for example, that the declared link does not resolve, that the named repository does not hold the announced data, or that access offered on request is refused without cause— is regarded as a breach of publication integrity and is handled under the journal's Retraction Policy and Ethical Standards.

Entry into Force

This policy applies to manuscripts received on or after its date of publication. Submissions already in the editorial process on that date continue to be governed by the conditions in force when they were received, without prejudice to their authors choosing to adopt this policy voluntarily.

See also the Ethical Standards, the Copyright and Licensing Policy and the Digital Preservation Policy.

Approved and published in September 2026.