Q. Dear Nature editors

I am a graduate student pursuing masters in biotechnology at a university. I am taking “Ethics and Professionalism Course” which is dealing with ethics, record keeping, laboratory notebook and paper publishing. I have been assigned a course work to inquire from one of the NATURE editors “What would be the reasonable time limit for keeping the data of a published paper ?”.

Could you please spare some time to reply me and give me your opinion of what would be a reasonable time limit for keeping the data (record keeping) of a published paper in your journal.

I really appreciate your help in doing my course work.

A. Dear graduate student

Permanently.

Yours sincerely

Nature