GMS publishes your research findings – and makes the related research data available through Dryad

Since 2013, ZBMED – Leibniz Information Centre for Life Sciences has been actively committed to archiving and publishing research data. To offer authors an opportunity to publish research data in parallel with GMS publications, ZBMEDhas become amember of Dryad, an open access repository for the research data underlying articles in peer-reviewed journals. Presently, ten of the journals published by GMS have shown interest in making data accessible, including GMS Zeitschrift für Medizinische Ausbildung (ZMA). What is research data in medicine? Research data in the field of medicine can be statistical data (e.g. from anonymized diagnostic findings), materials (e.g. International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD)), classifications and codes for diseases, pictures from imaging procedures (e.g. MRT), sensor data from biosignals or vital parameter measurements (e.g. ECG, EEG), biomaterial data from laboratory testing (e.g. blood samples, genome data), administrative patient information (e.g. from hospital information systems), as well as audio-visual data, models, and visualizations. Why should research data be available? Repeated criticism is voiced in the sciences that research findings cannot be verified because the underlying research data have not been published. To aid transparency, good scientific practice should include making data publicly accessible. In addition, a duplication of work can be avoided if certain data do not need to be collected multiple times and can be re-used, even in new contexts. Another advantage is that data can be cited, potentially strengthening the author’s own scientific reputation. Plus, publishing the data can often fulfill the requirements or recommendations of different sponsors, such as DFG, BMBF, EU, NIH, or even the guidelines of the author’s own institution. What are the advantages of making data accessible through Dryad? With scientific societies and publishers among its members, Dryad is an internationally established repository. Its long-term preservation system, CLOCKSS, ensures permanent availability of the data. Dryad makes the data accessible under the terms of a Creative Commons Zero (CCO) license to allow for the widest possible use. In addition, the repository is widely disseminated making the research data easily discoverable. Through cross-referencing between a journal article and the related data set, the documents get new accessibility (see Figure 1). Each data set receives its own permanent digital object identifier (DOI) allowing the data to be cited. Dryad also generates user statistics with which it is possible to ascertain the interest in the data and their potential scientific relevance (see Figure 2). How does publication take place via GMS? ZMA authors can indicate their wish to publish the underlying research data when submitting their manuscripts. If an author agrees, a message is sent directly to Dryad from the manuscript operating system, and a preliminary entry showing the manuscript’s metadata is created. The authors then receive an email with a direct link to this entry and can save data in any format and of any size. The data can thus be included in the review process via secured access. Generally it must be noted that currently Dryad only accepts data in English, meaning German data will not be published. When submitting the research data, the metadata which are taken from the manuscript submission at GMS should be expanded to include other important details, such as co-authors, keywords, etc. After nearly two years of Dryad membership, a clear discrepancy can be seen between a high percentage of affirmative declarations and very few actually published data sets. A rejection to publish research data has absolutely no influence on the review process. As part of the submission process via the GMSmanuscript operating system, we normally ask for the reasons why data upload to the Dryad repository was rejected, so that we can better focus our services on author needs. With the exception of “no data available”, the most common reasons at present have been a “mistrust” of the consequences of publishing and “authorship”, meaning