Publishing online supplementary material has been the subject of continuing debate in scholarly circles since the Journal of Neuroscience, published by the Society for Neuroscience, decided to no longer accept supplementary files with manuscripts. Open access publisher BioMed Central (BMC) has announced that it takes the opposite stance to the Journal of Neuroscience. It allows authors to submit supplementary files - referred to as 'additional files'- and also continues to look for ways to make the additional data supplied by authors as part of their articles more useful and accessible.
In justifying its decision to disallow supplementary material, the Journal of Neuroscience indicated that it felt such files placed an unnecessary burden on peer reviewers. Peer reviewers are vital, but their numbers are reportedly limited, it has been observed. Although the expectation that every reviewer should re-analyse all data sets and supporting information is unrealistic, when they are available as additional files they are at least available if the reviewer wishes to dig deeper, according to BMC. Most importantly, by sharing the underlying data, authors are increasing transparency and promoting reproducibility - one of the foundations of science - BMC maintains.
While some research domains including astronomy, genomics and economics have established cultural norms relating to data sharing, other fields have traditionally taken a much more proprietary approach to data. The challenge, in encouraging wider data sharing, is to demonstrate how sharing data can benefit not only the research community as a whole, but also can increase the visibility, impact and citation potential of scientists' work, it has been observed.
Improved tools specifically designed to track data file usage and citation are seen to be an important aspect of demonstrating the value of data sharing. BMC supports projects such as DataCite to better enable this. Meanwhile, the publisher continues to look for further ways to encourage authors to publish and share data sets. The Open Data Award, introduced in 2010, is one example, and the judging panel will be looking at the open data sets shared in BMC journals during 2010 as it commences the process of identifying the winner of the next award.
Search for more Regulations, guidelines and other institutional frameworks
To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.
