Supporting our researchers in sharing data underpinning publications - Wellcome Open Research Blog

"...Since last year, the publisher Springer Nature has offered a Research Data Support service to researchers. This is an optional service, through which an in-house team of specialist data editors and curators will review a dataset associated with a publication and help to enhance the associated metadata, assign persistent identifiers, produce a description of the data, and assist researchers in depositing the data. Advice on suitable community repositories is provided, and data is made available via the Springer Nature figshare repository where no such repository is available. Available to any researcher who wished to share data associated with a peer-reviewed scholarly work

Following a successful pilot phase, the service was expanded in January 2018 to make it available to any researcher who wished to share data associated with a peer-reviewed scholarly work (including papers, books and conference proceedings), whether published by Springer Nature or by another publisher. Given our commitment to supporting our researchers in sharing data and code underlying publications, Wellcome was keen to test whether this type of service could add value – both in terms of helping researchers to meet funder requirements and in making the data more discoverable and useable.

Wellcome has therefore initiated a pilot with Springer Nature to offer the Research Data Support service to our funded researchers. We are supporting costs associated with the service for an initial fixed number of datasets, and these will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis. A dataset can include a wide range of files supporting a publication of up to 50 gigabytes in total combined size. The broad scope of the pilot means that any previously unpublished files that have been generated as part of research, other than the research paper or manuscript, can be submitted to Research Data Support. And, qualifying researchers can utilise Research Data Support to share data that support any Wellcome-funded study being published in any peer-reviewed journal. Researchers publishing in Wellcome Open Research will shortly be able to take up the option to access the Research Data Support service directly through the submission system.  In the meantime, please contact the Wellcome Open Research team if you have any questions or would like to make use of the Service for data associated with a WOR article. The team will of course continue to provide advice and support to all authors, whether they opt to make use of the service or not...."