Scientific Data: an open access and open data publication to facilitate reproducible research

As open access to journal articles has become more established in scholarly publishing, a number of Scientific Technical and Medical (STM) publishers are working to help provide open access to research data (open data).

Researchers are generally supportive of data sharing and publication but they often lack incentives and mechanisms to share data effectively. For open data to help increase scientific reproducibility and reliability it must be more than just available – it should be understandable and reusable and, ideally, validated through peer review. Data journals and data articles have emerged as a new type of publication to help address these issues.