[open-science] Report from the Publishing Open Data Working Group meeting 17th June

[Iain Hrynaszkiewicz]

Dear all,

A report from the BioMed Central-led Publishing Open Data Working Group
meeting, held on 17th June, was posted on the BMC Blog earlier this
week:

http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/blogs/bmcblog/entry/report_from_the_p
ublishing_open

(and also discussed at last week's working group meeting). The meeting
was attended by several members of the Open Science working group. I'm
pleased to report that there were a number of mutually agreeable ways
forward. There are many things for the attendees to do after the meeting
and opportunities for collaboration. Some of the major outcomes include:

1. BioMed Central to lead on drafting a white paper providing much more
detail on the process, policy and implications of a variable licensing
agreement for published articles and additional (supplementary) files.
This will be made available for a defined period of internal/public
discussion.

2. The creation of some basic guidelines on preparing/publishing
additional (supplementary) files. Comprehensive information on "what do
we mean by data?" wasn't deemed necessary (or possible) but some basic
principles might be useful e.g. supplementary tables should not be
provided as PDF files.

3. Publishers to include some information in peer reviewer guidelines
about the expectations of peer reviewers when considering manuscripts
with additional (supplementary) data files. Currently there is little or
no information on if or how reviewers should handle additional data
files in BMC, PLoS, BMJ and Nature guidelines.

4. Agreement to work towards increased use of data sharing statements in
published articles.

If anyone in this group sees any possible area of collaboration please
contact me.

Kind regards,

Iain

Iain Hrynaszkiewicz
Journal Publisher

BioMed Central
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London, WC1X 8HB

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