Connecting Scientific Articles with Research Data: New Directions in Online Scholarly Publishing

Abstract

Researchers across disciplines are increasingly utilizing electronic tools to collect, analyze, and organize data. However, when it comes to publishing their work, there are no common, well-established standards on how to make that data available to other researchers. Consequently, data are often not stored in a consistent manner, making it hard or impossible to find data sets associated with an article - even though such data might be essential to reproduce results or to perform further analysis. Data repositories can play an important role in improving this situation, offering increased visibility, domain-specific coordination, and expert knowledge on data management. As a leading STM publisher, Elsevier is actively pursuing opportunities to establish links between the online scholarly article and data repositories. This helps to increase usage and visibility for both articles and data sets and also adds valuable context to the data. These data-linking efforts tie in with other initiatives at Elsevier to enhance the online article in order to connect with current researchers’ workflows and to provide an optimal platform for the communication of science in the digital era.