Data papers and data journals offer options to publish your dataset outside of a traditional paper.
What Is a Data Paper?
The research community increasingly recognizes datasets as scientific outputs on their own. It requires time and expertise to create, curate, and share a dataset. In addition, researchers are seeking mechanisms to overcome “publication bias” (publishing only studies that show a significant finding, which biases the literature). Data papers have evolved as one way to recognize researchers’ efforts via publication of descriptions of their datasets.
A data paper is a short paper (5-6 pages) that describes a dataset in detail, often going into more methodological detail than would be typical in another type of paper. While it may include some descriptive statistics, a data paper does not attempt to describe the relationship between variables or provide complex analyses.
A data paper also details the availability of the described dataset and methods to access it. Journals publishing data papers are moving toward asking authors to deposit their dataset into a subject-specific or generalist repository. However, a data paper generally includes far more metadata and methodological information than is included in a repository record.
Data papers are peer-reviewed publications that can be cited or used as evidence of research output in the same way as any other peer-reviewed paper.
What Is a Data Journal?
Simply put, a data journal is a scholarly publication that publishes data papers. Some data papers are published in special sections of regular journals (e.g., the journal Ecology). However, since 2000 a number of journals have appeared that exclusively publish data papers. Most data journals are open access. Data journals can be of varying quality, as with any other type of journal, and researchers should critically review their options before submitting a manuscript.
Where Can I Find Data Journals?
- Walters, W. H. (2020). Data journals: incentivizing data access and documentation within the scholarly communication system. Insights, 33(1), 18. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.510
Includes appendices with lists of data journals. - Akers, A Growing List of Data Journals
Blog post from 2014 with a long list of data journals. - University of Edinburgh: Sources of Dataset Peer Review
List of data journals with details and descriptions.
Sources
Candela, Leonardo, Donatella Castelli, Paolo Manghi, and Alice Tani. “Data Journals: A Survey.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 66, no. 9 (2015): 1747–62. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23358.
Walters, William H. “Data Journals: Incentivizing Data Access and Documentation within the Scholarly Communication System” 33, no. 1 (June 10, 2020): 18. https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.510.
Oregon State University Libraries. “DATA PAPERS & DATA JOURNALS,” August 30, 2023. https://guides.library.oregonstate.edu/research-data-services/data-management-data-papers-journals.