DRYAD announces nonprofit sustainability plans

The data repository invites community input on the future of data archiving at upcoming membership meeting

Dryad, a repository for data underlying the international scientific and medical literature, works with a variety of journals, societies and publishers to archive research data at the time of publication. The project began in 2009 and has published more than 3,000 data packages. In 2012, Dryad incorporated as a nonprofit organization with the mission to make scientific and medical research data permanently available to all researchers and educators free-of-charge without barriers to reuse.

For the past four years, Dryad has worked with its stakeholders to develop a sustainability plan to realize this vision. Central to the sustainability plan is a one-time submission fee that will offset the actual costs of preserving data indefinitely. A variety of pricing plans are available for journals and other organizations such societies, funders and libraries to purchase discounted submission fees on behalf of their researchers. For data not covered by a pricing plan, the researcher will be asked to pay upon submission, with waivers provided to researchers from World Bank low and lower-middle income economies. Submission fees will apply to all new submissions starting September 2013. Dryad will also be supported in part by its membership, by grants for research and innovation, and by donors. Membership in Dryad is open to any organization that supports research and education. Dryad is pleased to include Pensoft Publishers among its Charter Members.

The Dryad Membership meeting, to be held in Oxford, UK on Friday, May 24 is open to members, prospective members, researchers and other interested parties. Attendees will hear about recent and upcoming developments in the repository and the nonprofit organization. In addition, there will be an Emerging Issues Forum with presentations from the community about future directions for Dryad, its members, and partner journals, including models for the technical and peer review of data, ideas for promoting the adoption of data citations, measuring data reuse, funder perspectives on the use of research grants for data management costs and the relevance of larger data networks.

Dryad’s Membership Meeting is part of a series of free public events in Oxford spotlighting trends in scholarly communication with an emphasis on research data, including a Symposium on the Now and Future of Data Publication on Wednesday, May 22nd and an ORCID Outreach Meeting with a special joint Dryad-ORCID Symposium on Research Attribution on Thursday, May 23rd. Registration for these events closes on May 13th. Remote attendance will be available for those unable to attend in person.

For more information about submitting data, becoming a member or the sustainability plan, please visit http://datadryad.org. The website also offers an Ideas Forum where people can make their voice heard by suggesting and voting for new features and offering comments.

CONTACT:

Laura Wendell, Executive Director

Email: lwendell@datadrayd.org

Tel: +1-919-668-4005 or +1-919-423-3889

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