NPG launches experiments to improve research practices | Academic & Humanities | IWR - Information world review

"Scientific publisher, Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is currently conducting two experiments to help to improve best practices for pre-publication data sharing and drafting of community standards in the research community....The first experiment – pre-publication data sharing – is attempting to directly address the issues such as ensuring that data is available to the community before publication and giving researchers credit for the rapid release of data generated in large-scale reference projects prior to publication.....By posting data management and release plans – often called marker papers – in Nature Precedings, data-producing scientists can describe the data available as well as the timescale for release, quality control, ethical and legal considerations, as well as any funder-mandated restrictions on competing publication....The documents are permanently archived in a stable and citable format for reference by other scientists who wish to perform their own analyses on the data in accordance with any restrictions. The documents can also be used to assess the impact of released data sets. A collection of marker papers and data plans forms the pilot for this community experiment....The second experiment is called Community standards. According to NPG, standards documents are often authored by small groups, and may or may not be distributed widely within the community prior to formal announcement of the standard....