DataCite and the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM), have issued a series of recommendations to improve the accessibility of primary research data. During the past three years, two chemical journals - Synthesis and Synlett - published by Thieme, served as test cases for Chemistry. Authors who published in these journals had the option to also publish their primary data via the online platform Thieme eJournals, making them accessible to other researchers. Just like any other scientific publication, the primary data was identified with a digital object identifier (DOI).
Scientific research produces a large number of primary data every day. Most of this primary data was used almost exclusively by the original researchers for their own scientific purposes because, up till now, it was not possible to access it systematically. To change this, STM, the cooperation of international science publishers, joined forces with 15 major libraries and information centers organised in the non-profit research network DataCite, formed in 2009, to develop a set of recommendations for better primary data accessibility. The recommendations provide a framework for making primary data available to the scientific community via publication in online journal platforms.
The articles published in the print and online publications of cooperating science journals contain a DOI reference to the respective primary data – and vice versa. Thus, not only the research results get published, but also the primary data they are based on. Natural science research in particular profits from this approach.
At the onset of the cooperation, Thieme worked together with experts at the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) and DataCite to define consistent processes and formats for primary data publication. This structure, in conjunction with a central archive, resulted in a service that makes valuable information available to the authors and readers of Synthesis and Synlett.
The participation of scientific authors is a key success factor of this approach. By making their primary data available, authors not only support the scientific community, but also their own careers.
