(28 Mar 2022) The Public Library of Science (PLOS) today announced that it is testing a new experimental open science feature intended to promote data sharing and reuse across the PLOS journal portfolio. A subset of PLOS articles that link to shared research data in a repository will now display a prominent visual cue designed to help researchers find accessible data. Sharing research data that support published articles is considered best practice as it promotes data discovery and reuse, and aligns with the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) data principles.
Today’s launch is an ‘Accessible Data’ feature deployed on articles that link to research data in one of several repositories. The feature will appear on more than 3,000 PLOS articles, beginning this week. It will also appear on newly published articles that qualify for the feature during the experiment, which is expected to run until the end of 2022. PLOS articles that link to datasets in Dryad, Figshare or Open Science Framework will display the feature initially. The feature will be extended to more repositories if the experiment is successful in increasing use of data associated with publications.
The press release in full is here.
