Dryad for Science Librarians

Submitted by Peggy Schaeffer, Dryad Communications Coordinator.

Librarians who work with scientific information may have heard of Dryad, the data repository (not the tree spirit). Here’s an introduction, especially for librarians working in the life sciences and biomedicine.

Quick essentials

Dryad is a data repository for the data underlying published articles in the biosciences; all the data files supporting the conclusions of an article, regardless of format, can be archived in one place where they will be independently discoverable, yet securely linked to the article.
The goal of the repository is to preserve data and to make it freely available for reuse.
Dryad welcomes data from all life science disciplines, from Ecology to Infectious Disease to Paleontology.
Dryad accepts data files associated with articles and other publication types, including books and PhD dissertations.
All data files in Dryad get a citable DOI and their usage is tracked and displayed.
Dryad is being developed by a community of journals, publishers, and scientific societies working together to make data archiving as simple and rewarding as possible.

How does data get into Dryad?

Authors may deposit data associated with their articles; optimally they deposit data files at the time of manuscript acceptance. They can add the Dryad DOI to the final article proof so readers can find and download the data.
Many journals and publishers are collaborating with Dryad to “integrate” their manuscript processing systems with the repository so that the two systems exchange metadata behind the scenes, streamlining the author’s upload process and ensuring stable two-way linking between a published article and its data.
There’s no charge at this time for depositing data in Dryad

Aren’t there lots of other data repositories? What makes Dryad unique?

There are hundreds of repositories for data types from Astrophysics to Veterinary Medicine; Dryad aims to provide a home for the “long tail” of data that doesn’t have a specialized disciplinary repository.

Dryad accepts data in any format, from tabular data to video files, as long as it’s associated with an article.

Data files in Dryad are curated (by real live librarians) and made freely available under the CC0 waiver so they can be downloaded and reused by any interested researcher.
Dryad is an open source project, built on DSpace, with open development and open documentation.
Dryad is responsive to and managed by its stakeholders, including societies, journals, publishers, and funders, and is becoming a non-profit organization; you can review the organization’s sustainability plans.

How can librarians use Dryad?

Show Dryad to a researcher so they see how easy it can be to archive their data (and get citations and credit for their data files).
Add a link to Dryad wherever your library offers resources for researchers.
Suggest that researchers archive their data in a public repository.
Younger scientists can gain additional visibility from making their data files available and citable, and by adding a section for data to their CV’s, consider how this post-doc’s CV highlights data in Dryad on his list of publications .
Research teams and established academics can archive data from years of published research.
Demo Dryad to show what making data files public looks like. See these examples of highly downloaded data packages:
- Ask scientists about their data! Where is it? How are they planning on preserving it? Many people regard their data as important only to them; suggest that their data is part of the scholarly record and deserves the same care and attention as their articles.
- Mention Dryad to colleagues, journal editors, and others if they are asking about data management.
- Refer grant writers to Dryad when they’re drafting their data management plan; individuals and project teams may identify Dryad as the destination repository for published data from their research.

Other data resources to consider

It’s a challenge to keep up with the growth of data repositories; there are hundreds of specialized data repositories across all fields in the sciences, and some that are cross-disciplinary, like Dryad. To find the best place (or places) for data to be archived, consult one of these dynamic resources:

Databib — a community-curated list of data repositories
A list from a collaboration between the British Library, BioMed Central and the Digital Curation Centre
The list of repositories and databases for open data from the Open Access Directory
The MIT Libraries list of data repositories

Consult and share best practice guidelines for data management, for example:

Some Simple Guidelines for Effective Data Management, Borer ET, Seabloom EW, Jones MB, Schildhauer M (2009). Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 90(2), 205-214. doi:10.1890/0012-9623-90.2.205.
Data archiving in ecology and evolution: best practices, MC Whitlock, (2010). Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 26 (2), p. 61-65. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2010.11.006.

To learn more:
Repository home: http://datadryad.org
News: http://blog.datadryad.org
Project documentation: http://wiki.datadryad.org
Announce and User mailing lists: http://datadryad.org/about
Twitter: @datadryad
Code: http://code.google.com/p/drya

Please send us your comments, feedback and questions about Dryad. We can send you Dryad bookmarks or brochures if you’d like to make them available. We want to hear from you! You can also contact us at:
Todd Vision, Project Director, tjv@bio.unc.edu
Peggy Schaeffer, Communications Coordinator, pschaeffer@nescent.org

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