More and more journals are having data-sharing mandates for their published articles. An example of such a development can be observed in PLOS’s new data availability policy:
“PLOS journals require authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception.
When submitting a manuscript online, authors must provide a Data Availability Statement describing compliance with PLOS’s policy. If the article is accepted for publication, the data availability statement will be published as part of the final article.
Refusal to share data and related metadata and methods in accordance with this policy will be grounds for rejection.”
In addition, some BioMed Central journals now encourage or require authors, as a condition of publication, to include in some article types a section called ‘Availability of supporting data’ that provides a permanent link to the data supporting the results reported in the article. The aim is to provide links in a consistent place within an article to supporting data – regardless of the location or format of the data – and to make it clear to readers when they can also access the data as well as the article.
Nature has also stated that “authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to others without undue qualifications”.
If you’re a NTU researcher looking for the following:
- a reliable data repository
- a persistent identifier for your dataset for people to cite it easily with
- ready-to-use citation for your dataset so that people could copy and paste to cite your dataset
- link between your dataset and your published article so as to increase visibility of your publications
- making your datasets and published works Googleable
Drop us a note and we’d love to work with you to curate your research data. Contact Ms Goh Su Nee (email: sunee@ntu.edu.sg) or Mr Cheng Wei Yeow (email: WYCheng@ntu.edu.sg) or via your subject librarian.
