As the research community embraces data sharing, academic journals can do their bit to help. Starting this month, all research papers published in Nature Biotechnology, Nature and 11 other Nature titles will include information on whether and how others can access the underlying data.

These statements will report the availability of the 'minimal data set' necessary to interpret, replicate and build on the findings reported in the paper. Where applicable, they will include details about publicly archived data sets that have been analyzed or generated during the study. Where restrictions on access are in place—for example, in the case of privacy limitations or third-party control—authors will be expected to make this clear.

The new policy (http://go.nature.com/2bf4vqn) builds on our long-standing support for data availability as a condition of publication. It also extends our support for data citation, the practice of citing data sets in reference lists via digital object identifiers (DOIs).

Not only differences in the culture of data sharing and access between different disciplines, but also a lack of obvious, public, community repositories can pose a significant barrier to public data deposition. Nevertheless, even in disciplines that are not yet so able to embrace openness and sharing, there is increasing awareness and appreciation that data deposition can enhance the visibility and reuse of published research, and that data citation can increase the recognition of those who create and share data.

Our aim is that consistent information on data availability in our papers will promote data reuse by future researchers. Indeed, where public data archiving is a mandatory requirement of journals, increasing evidence suggests that the inclusion of data-availability statements with persistent links to data in published articles is an effective approach to ensuring public data availability and policy compliance (FASEB J. 27, 1304–1308, 2013).