“There is an increasing need to make research data more available, citable, discoverable, interpretable, reusable and reproducible.”
Guest blog post by Sam Burridge, Managing Director for Open Research at Nature Publishing Group.
It’s been a busy few weeks for the open access team at Nature Publishing Group. In China, we announced the launch of a new Microsystems & Nanoengineering journal with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. A study published in Scientific Reports on the potential for nanoparticles being used for invisible barcodes has caught the attention of the media. And last, but by no means least, we launched the first content for Scientific Data.
Scientific Data aims to address the increasing need to make research data more available, citable, discoverable, interpretable, reusable and reproducible. It is an online-only, peer-reviewed publication for descriptions of scientifically valuable datasets called Data Descriptors.
Data Descriptors are a new category of publication designed to provide detailed descriptions of experimental, observational, computational or curated data. They integrate a narrative component with structured, curated information to maximize interpretation, search and reuse of the underlying primary datasets, presenting information on the genesis of the datasets and the experimental steps used to derive them, and linking to the resulting data files.
Data Descriptors are designed to provide a ‘missing link’ between the original dataset and the article of record.