Research data archiving

Research data archiving is the long-term storage of scholarly research data, including the natural sciences, social sciences, and life sciences. The various academic journals have differing policies regarding how much of their data and methods researchers are required to store in a public archive, and what is actually archived varies widely between different disciplines. Similarly, the major grant-giving institutions have varying attitudes towards public archival of data. In general, the tradition of science has been for publications to contain sufficient information to allow fellow researchers to replicate and therefore test the research. In recent years this approach has become increasingly strained as research in some areas depends on large datasets which cannot easily be replicated independently.Biotropica requires, as a condition for publication, that the data supporting the results in the paper and metadata describing them must be archived in an appropriate public archive such as Dryad, Figshare, GenBank, TreeBASE, or NCBI. Authors may elect to make the data publicly available as soon as the article is published or, if the technology of the archive allows, embargo access to the data up to three years after article publication. A statement describing Data Availability will be included in the manuscript as described in the instructions to authors. Exceptions to the required archiving of data may be granted at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief for studies that include sensitive information (e.g., the location of endangered species). Our Editorial explaining the motivation for this policy can be found here. A more comprehensive list of data repositories is available here.The American Naturalist requires authors to deposit the data associated with accepted papers in a public archive. For gene sequence data and phylogenetic trees, deposition in GenBank or TreeBASE, respectively, is required. There are many possible archives that may suit a particular data set, including the Dryad repository for ecological and evolutionary biology data. All accession numbers for GenBank, TreeBASE, and Dryad must be included in accepted manuscripts before they go to Production. If the data is deposited somewhere else, please provide a link. If the data is culled from published literature, please deposit the collated data in Dryad for the convenience of your readers. Any impediments to data sharing should be brought to the attention of the editors at the time of submission so that appropriate arrangements can be worked out.The primary data underlying the conclusions of an article are critical to the verifiability and transparency of the scientific enterprise, and should be preserved in usable form for decades in the future. For this reason, Journal of Heredity requires that newly reported nucleotide or amino acid sequences, and structural coordinates, be submitted to appropriate public databases (e.g., GenBank; the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database; DNA Database of Japan; the Protein Data Bank ; and Swiss-Prot). Accession numbers must be included in the final version of the manuscript. For other forms of data (e.g., microsatellite genotypes, linkage maps, images), the Journal endorses the principles of the Joint Data Archiving Policy (JDAP) in encouraging all authors to archive primary datasets in an appropriate public archive, such as Dryad, TreeBASE, or the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity. Authors are encouraged to make data publicly available at time of publication or, if the technology of the archive allows, opt to embargo access to the data for a period up to a year after publication.The American Genetic Association also recognizes the vast investment of individual researchers in generating and curating large datasets. Consequently, we recommend that this investment be respected in secondary analyses or meta-analyses in a gracious collaborative spirit.Molecular Ecology expects that data supporting the results in the paper should be archived in an appropriate public archive, such as GenBank, Gene Expression Omnibus, TreeBASE, Dryad, the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity, your own institutional or funder repository, or as Supporting Information on the Molecular Ecology web site. Data are important products of the scientific enterprise, and they should be preserved and usable for decades in the future. Authors may elect to have the data publicly available at time of publication, or, if the technology of the archive allows, may opt to embargo access to the data for a period up to a year after publication. Exceptions may be granted at the discretion of the editor, especially for sensitive information such as human subject data or the location of endangered species.Such material must be hosted on an accredited independent site (URL and accession numbers to be provided by the author), or sent to the Nature journal at submission, either uploaded via the journal's online submission service, or if the files are too large or in an unsuitable format for this purpose, on CD/DVD (five copies). Such material cannot solely be hosted on an author's personal or institutional web site.Nature requires the reviewer to determine if all of the supplementary data and methods have been archived. The policy advises reviewers to consider several questions, including: 'Should the authors be asked to provide supplementary methods or data to accompany the paper online? (Such data might include source code for modelling studies, detailed experimental protocols or mathematical derivations.)Science supports the efforts of databases that aggregate published data for the use of the scientific community. Therefore, before publication, large data sets (including microarray data, protein or DNA sequences, and atomic coordinates or electron microscopy maps for macromolecular structures) must be deposited in an approved database and an accession number provided for inclusion in the published paper.'Materials and methods' – Science now requests that, in general, authors place the bulk of their description of materials and methods online as supporting material, providing only as much methods description in the print manuscript as is necessary to follow the logic of the text. (Obviously, this restriction will not apply if the paper is fundamentally a study of a new method or technique.)To allow others to verify and build on the work published in Royal Society journals, it is a condition of publication that authors make available the data, code and research materials supporting the results in the article.Datasets and code should be deposited in an appropriate, recognised, publicly available repository. Where no data-specific repository exists, authors should deposit their datasets in a general repository such as Dryad (repository) or Figshare.The Journal of Archaeological Science has had a data disclosure policy since at least 2013. Their policy states that 'all data relating to the article must be made available in Supplementary files or deposited in external repositories and linked to within the article. The policy recommends that data are deposited in a repository such as the Archaeology Data Service, the Digital Archaeological Record, or PANGAEA. A 2018 study found a data availability rate of 53%, reflecting either weak enforcement of this policy or an incomplete understanding among editors, reviewers, and authors of how to interpret and implement this policy. Research data archiving is the long-term storage of scholarly research data, including the natural sciences, social sciences, and life sciences. The various academic journals have differing policies regarding how much of their data and methods researchers are required to store in a public archive, and what is actually archived varies widely between different disciplines. Similarly, the major grant-giving institutions have varying attitudes towards public archival of data. In general, the tradition of science has been for publications to contain sufficient information to allow fellow researchers to replicate and therefore test the research. In recent years this approach has become increasingly strained as research in some areas depends on large datasets which cannot easily be replicated independently.