Open Data Policy

The Journal of Global Higher Education (JGHE) is committed to high standards or scholarly rigor while maintaining its central values of inclusivity and accessibility. Open Data is a crucial way to promote scholarly rigour by safeguarding the reliability and trustworthiness of published research. In line with global trends towards Open Data, the JGHE encourages all authors to engage in data sharing where possible and appropriate, in line with the Journal’s ethical principles, including protecting participant identity and confidentiality.

Having said this, an enduring criticism of Open Data requirements is the risk of exacerbating inequities in the global knowledge system through processes of cumulative advantage:

“Uncritical narratives of openness, therefore, may fail to address structural barriers in knowledge production and hence perpetuate the cumulative advantage of dominant groups and the knowledge they produced. Making processes open requires capacities (in terms of knowledge, skills, financial resources, political will, technological readiness and motivation) which vary across regions, institutions and demographics.” (Ross-Hellauer et al., 2021, p. 3). 

With this in mind, and recognising the diversity of approaches to Open Data in different research communities, the JGHE seeks to be flexible and inclusive with regard to authors’ practices of data sharing and to provide resources that may help scholars share their data with the global research community.

Open Data Declaration

Authors are therefore encouraged to include an Open Data Declaration in submitted manuscripts, detailing their approach to data sharing. At a minimum, if data has been made available, the authors should direct readers to these resources within their Declaration, using permanent hyperlinks. If data has not been made available, the authors should briefly explain why this is the case.

Resources

Open data guidelines

The “FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship” (Wilkinson et al., 2016) provides useful guidelines for data management and data sharing, centred on the ideals of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reuse of research data. These guidelines are widely adopted by national and international funding agencies.

Recommended data repositories

The Centre for Open Science operates a free, open source data repository through the Open Science Framework (OSF).

The Qualitative Data Repository (QDR) offers a “secure” and “non-discriminatory” space for sharing qualitative data, as well as guidance for appropriate data management and sharing.

References

Burgos, D. (Ed.). (2020). Radical Solutions and Open Science: An Open Approach to Boost Higher Education. Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4276-3

Chtena, N., Alperin, J. P., Morales, E., Fleerackers, A., Dorsch, I., Pinfield, S., & Simard, M.-A. (2023). The neglect of equity and inclusion in open science policies of Europe and the Americas. FapUNIFESP (SciELO). https://doi.org/10.1590/scielopreprints.7366

Kruschick, F., & Schoch, K. (2023). Knowledge equity and Open Science: An attempt to outline the field from a feminist research perspective. Research Ideas and Outcomes, 9. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.9.e85860

Rodriguez, I., Arcos Medina, G., Pástor, D., Oñate, A., & Gómez, O. S. (2020). Open Data in Higher Education—A Systematic Literature Review. In M. Botto-Tobar, O. S. Gómez, R. Rosero Miranda, & A. Diaz Cadena (Eds.), Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing (pp. 75–88). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63665-4_6

Ross-Hellauer, T., Reichmann, S., Cole, N. L., Fessl, A., Klebel, T., & Pontika, N. (2021). Dynamics of cumulative advantage and threats to equity in open science: A scoping review. R. Soc.  Open Sci., 9(211032).

Wilkinson, M. D., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, Ij. J., Appleton, G., Axton, M., Baak, A., Blomberg, N., Boiten, J.-W., da Silva Santos, L. B., Bourne, P. E., Bouwman, J., Brookes, A. J., Clark, T., Crosas, M., Dillo, I., Dumon, O., Edmunds, S., Evelo, C. T., Finkers, R., … Mons, B. (2016). The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific Data, 3(1), 160018. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18

This policy will be reviewed periodically to ensure its relevance. Feedback and suggestions from the academic community are welcome and can be directed to the editorial board.​

Open Data Policy © 2025 by Thomas Brotherhood  is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0

Please reference as: Brotherhood, T.  (2025) Open Data Policy. Journal of Global Higher Education. 

Version 1, 2025.