DATA: The Issues From A Publisher’s Perspective Matt Day Database Publisher Nature Publishing Group

“authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to readers without undue qualifications in material transfer agreements” But how should authors do this? What should publishers do to support and ensure this?

Nature Genetics – 350 Excel files (350 MB) during Little “added value” from the journal Individual files up to 100 MB are easy for us to handle Storage and delivery is cheap for the current data volumes Our internal systems are hard to overhaul to support larger datasets (esp. sets of images and movies) We can monitor data downloads (article metrics) Fall-back mechanisms (CLOCKS, Portico, PubMed Central …) Article-associated data

On what basis should NPG “endorse” repositories? What would happen if the repository closes? What is a “professional” data repository? - long term viability - service levels provided - data mirroring/backup - ease of access and usage - quality control (of the data and metadata) - bidirectional links with associated journal articles - integration and linkage with other data sources/repositories - persistent identifiers (e.g. DOIs) Usage metrics (especially for article-associated data) Who decides which data can no longer be preserved? How is this decision made? External data repositories

Who “adds the value”? Making data available, discoverable, useful Ensuring data is reliable, authoritative How are the financial costs met? Burden on authors? Burden on peer/expert reviewers? Roles of journal staff? Roles of data repositories? How can mandated data deposition be policed?