Data Sharing & Publishing at Nature Publishing Group

Abstract:

In recent years, the research community has come to recognize that upon-request data sharing has important limitations^1,2. The Nature-titled journals feel that researchers have a duty to share data without undue qualifications, in a manner that allows others to replicate and build upon their published findings. Historically, the Nature journals have been strong supporters of data deposition in communities with existing data mandates, and have required data sharing upon request in all other cases. To help address some of the limitations of upon-request data sharing, the Nature titles have strengthened their existing data policies and forged a new partnership with Scientific Data, to promote wider data sharing in discoverable, citeable and reusable forms, and to ensure that scientists get appropriate credit for sharing³. Scientific Data is a new peer-reviewed journal for descriptions of research datasets, which works with a wide of range of public data repositories⁴. Articles at Scientific Data may either expand on research publications at other journals or may be used to publish new datasets. The Nature Publishing Group has also signed the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles⁵, and Scientific Data is our first journal to include formal data citations. We are currently in the process of adding data citation support to our various journals.

1 Wicherts, J. M., Borsboom, D., Kats, J. & Molenaar, D. The poor availability of psychological research data for reanalysis. Am. Psychol. 61, 726-728, doi:10.1037/0003-066x.61.7.726 (2006).

2 Vines, T. H. et al. Mandated data archiving greatly improves access to research data. FASEB J. 27, 1304-1308, doi:10.1096/fj.12-218164 (2013).

3 Data-access practices strengthened. Nature 515, 312, doi:10.1038/515312a (2014).

4 More bang for your byte. Sci. Data 1, 140010, doi:10.1038/sdata.2014.10 (2014).

5 Data Citation Synthesis Group: Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles. (FORCE11, San Diego, CA, 2014).