Guest post by Viki Hurst, Locum Associate Editor for Scientific Data
Scientific Data is exploring how peer-review mechanisms for sensitive human data can be improved. Here, we outline some of the initial feedback we received from leaders of human data repositories (HDRs), and some innovative alternatives to peer-review. Continue reading
Springer Nature, the publisher of Scientific Data, has recently been working with several other publishers, brought together by FAIRsharing and DataCite, to develop a common set of guidelines that publishers could use when assessing and recommending data repositories to their authors.
We invite our readers to consider the draft article that describes the work, its motivation, and relations to other initiatives, and to provide the authors with feedback via this form. The commenting period is open until the end of January 2020. Continue reading
Today, we are pleased to announce the formation of a new Senior Editorial Board, the members of which will guide our larger Editorial Board membership and will play a lead role in setting standards for papers submitted to Scientific Data.
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Today, we are releasing a new checklist for authors drafting Data Descriptors that build or expand on other publications. It is now available on our Editorial & Publishing Policies page and from the link below.
Complementary Data Descriptor Checklist
Data Descriptors are designed to be complementary to traditional research articles. Researchers can describe and release their data in a more complete manner, and may be able to reduce their reliance on supplementary material, which can be hard to find and poorly accessible during peer-review, and which offers authors little additional credit. About half of the Data Descriptors published at Scientific Data so far are linked to one or more research articles at other journals. Continue reading
Since our launch in 2014, we have published descriptions of datasets archived at more than 45 different repositories. This diversity is a key part of the Scientific Data philosophy; we aim to support as wide a range of data repositories as possible, within the constraints of our strong policies on data preservation and openness (learn more). So our authors find the right repository for their data, we maintain and regularly update a list of recommended open data repositories, which is also used more widely by the Nature Research journals and our publisher Springer Nature. Last year we also improved our support for institutional repositories. Continue reading
Manuscripts published at Scientific Data contain a ‘Data Citations’ section that helps authors formally acknowledge any datasets mentioned in their manuscript. We know that this section is unfamiliar to many of our authors, so here we provide some background on the purpose of data citations, and advice on completing this section when submitting to Scientific Data. Continue reading
Last month Scientific Data was all about Japan, with the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Seventh Plenary Meeting in Tokyo, and the Scientific Data Japan Roadshow stopping off in Yokohama, Mishima, Fukuoka, Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe and Tsukuba.
{credit}Photo by Chizuko Kobayashi{/credit}
This week, we updated our data repository recommendations to clarify our existing support for institutional repositories. We have also made it easier for authors using these resources to submit manuscripts to Scientific Data.
| This week we announced an update to our journal policies on code sharing. To encourage our authors to share their code, we also added a new code availability section to our article templates. This new code availability section focuses mainly on articles that rely on custom code to generate or process data described in our articles. But, almost all modern research employs code or software at some stage. We feel that, ideally, it is best to describe all code or software used in a study in a way that supports reproducible research. What does this mean for our authors who would like to share their code alongside their data? What should be included in the code availability section? Here are some suggestions from our editorial team. |  |
