BMC integrates two journals with Dryad

Two of BioMed Central's journals have integrated with the open data repository Dryad. Now, authors submitting their research to either BMC Biology or BMC Evolutionary Biology will have the opportunity to deposit their data directly into the Dryad archive and will receive a permanent, citable link to their dataset, according to an editorial published in both journals.

The authors of the editorial say that, 'although this does not affect any of our current data deposition policies at these journals, we hope to encourage a more widespread adoption of open data sharing in the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology by facilitating this process for our authors.'

They go on to say: 'The hope behind this integration is not just to encourage authors to open up the data behind the articles they publish with us, but to facilitate it. Although the Dryad repository hosts research data from across all fields of science and medicine, it has been among the ecological and evolutionary biology research communities that deposition has most frequently been taken up. It is for this reason that we have targeted these journals specifically, with a view to extending integration to other fields in the future.'

On a practical level, the editorial explains, this means that if an author submits a paper to either of the journals, they will receive an email with a one-time only link to Dryad with instructions on how to deposit their data, and how and where to cite the dataset in their paper using best practices from DataCite. Once the paper is published, BioMed Central will notify Dryad, and the repository will update its records accordingly.