To promote the preservation and fuller use of data, The American Naturalist, Evolution, the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Molecular Ecology, Heredity, and other key journals in evolution and ecology will soon introduce a new data archiving policy to ensure that data supporting published articles is preserved and made publicly available. The policy has been enacted by the Executive Councils of the societies owning or sponsoring the journals.

The essentials of the policy are:

  • Data underlying an article needs to be archived by the authors at the time of publication.
  • The appropriate form of the data is the final processed form used in analysis.
  • The data must be archived in an approved repository (one that makes it publicly available, has a guarantee of persistence, etc).
  • The author should provide sufficient details so that a third party can reasonably interpret the data correctly.
  • Embargoes of up to one year may be permitted, depending on the journal.
  • 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.

Data that have an established standard repository, such as DNA sequences, should continue to be archived in the appropriate repository, such as GenBank.  Data can also be archived in a more flexible, interdisciplinary digital data archive such as the National Science Foundation–sponsored Dryad repository, at
http://datadryad.org.
The fact that these journals are making this policy change as a coordinated group is strategically important, and bodes well for more widespread adoption.

Reference:
Whitlock MC, McPeek MA, Rausher MD, Rieseberg L, Moore AJ (2010) Data Archiving. American Naturalist 175:145–146. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/650340.

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