Data deposit requirements of selected science journals

An important principle of science is that experiments or studies should be reproducible by someone working independently.  In order for this to occur, data that is the basis of research findings must be available.  Explicit statements of data deposit requirements from some major scientific journals are included below to illustrate this expectation.

Dryad consortium of journals

Dryad is an international repository of data underlying peer-reviewed articles in the basic and applied biosciences. Dryad enables scientists to validate published findings, explore new analysis methodologies, repurpose data for research questions unanticipated by the original authors, and perform synthetic studies. Dryad is governed by a consortium of journals that collaboratively promote data archiving and ensure the sustainability of the repository.

A selection of journals that require the deposit of data underlying peer-reviewed articles is included below:

Journal of the Royal Society Interface

The Royal Society Open Data Policy states, "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 or Figshare."

Nature

"A condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to others without undue qualifications.

Data sets must be made freely available to readers from the date of publication, and must be provided to editors and peer-reviewers at submission, for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript."

Nature includes examples of appropriate public data repositories.

PLoS

PLoS Editorial and Publishing Policy states, "PLOS is committed to ensuring the availability of data and materials that underpin any articles published in PLOS journals. PLOS's ideal is to make all data relevant to a given article and all readily replaceable materials immediately available without restrictions (while not compromising confidentiality in the context of human-subject research)." 

"...authors must comply with current best practice in their discipline for the sharing of data through databases...Where no field-specific database exists, authors can deposit data in Dryad."

Science

"All data necessary to understand, assess, and extend the conclusions of the manuscript must be available to any reader of Science.  Science supports the efforts of databases that aggregate published data for the use of the scientific community" and provides a list of approved databases in the Data and Materials Availability after Publication section of the General Information for Authors.