Integration of Data and Publications - Alliance for Permanent Access

Report on Integration of Data and Publications Grant Agreement no.: 261530
Advantages are that any supplements of a journal articles remain tied to the official
scholarly record, and are part of its peer review process, but
Limitations are in the new restrictions posed; adding original research data is often no
longer possible.
3. Data resides in Community-endorsed Public Repository with bi-directional
linking to and from articles
In this model the data relating to a scholarly article are deposited in designated Public
Repositories, best examples are GenBank and World Protein DataBank. The accession
numbers of the data in those databases are added to the journal manuscript and
referenced, often within the article text, as well as in the footnotes or reference list.
Advantages are that the data become part of larger datasets in the same area thereby
serving the research community as a whole, and it is normalized, standardized, curated
and preserved. The connection between data and publication are secured via the
accession numbers that are embedded in the article. Even better are the examples
(Pangaea, CCDC, PubChem) where the bidirectional linking between data and articles
are secured, and likewise from the data to the articles. There are no restrictions on
volume.
Limitations are that these databases tend to exist only in a few subject areas so far,
mainly biology, life science, earth science and chemistry. The future of these databases
often depends on government funding and may be threatened by budget cuts.
a. Journals have set up an own storage facility for data
A sub-category for data referenced from articles that reside in a special data-storage
facility established by the publisher fits the example of Thieme publishers in Germany,
as later described in paragraph 3.6. Thieme have recently instigated collaboration with
the data facilities of FIZ Karlsruhe to offer their chemistry authors the possibility to
store the raw and original research data alongside their articles.
Advantages lie in the strong link between the data and the scholarly record and the
availability of the data for further examination and re-use to all the journal readers,
editors and other users.
Limitations are the danger of creating new silos for data per journal or per publisher,
which can be a barrier to discoverability and reuse.
b. Journals offer dynamic data made interactive, data can reside with the
article or in public repositories
Another sub-category exists for journals who present the relevant data sitting in an
official repository or data centre or anywhere else from within the article. This model
emphasizes what readers of a journal article can do with the data rather than where the
Opportunities for Data Exchange (ODE) –www.ode-project.eu 38