Elsevier and Dryad Implement Reciprocal Linking Between Datasets and Published Research Articles

AMSTERDAM, July 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

Elsevier articles on ScienceDirect and scientific and medical research dataat Dryad now reciprocally linked

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, and the Dryad Digital Repository, a leading archive for scientific and medical research data, today announced that they have implemented two-way linking between their respective content.

The Dryad Digital Repository provides facilities for archiving, discovery and accessibility of data files associated with any published article in the sciences or medicine, as well as software scripts and other files important to the article. Dryad is a nonprofit organization committed to its mission of making data publicly available for research and educational reuse. All datasets stored by Dryad receive persistent, resolvable Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to allow their proper citation.

Scientific and medical research datasets stored by Dryad for research articles published in 28 Elsevier journals can now be immediately accessed at Dryad from their online article on ScienceDirect and vice versa. This allows readers to easily find the background information they need in order to develop a deeper understanding of the article, and helps to place the article in a larger context.

Dr. Todd Vision, Associate Director for Informatics at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center and Principal Investigator on the primary NSF grant funding Dryad, said, "We are delighted to work with Elsevier in cementing the union between scientific articles and research data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution was one of the first journals that joined the Dryad Consortium and we would like to applaud them for recognizing that the integrity, rigor, and long-term impact of the science published by the journal is strengthened by archiving the associated data at the time of publication. We also believe that authors themselves will ultimately benefit, in the form of increased citations and other forms of professional credit, for making their data available for others to reuse."

Dr. Derek Wildman, Editor in Chief of Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution added, "DNA sequence data serves as the basis for the majority of the studies we publish. Dryad has done an excellent job in establishing a public archive for all types of data used in evolutionary biology. By making these data sets public and allowing for direct linking between a published research papers, scientists can more efficiently build on the work of their predecessors, strengthening scientific research enterprise. We see the incorporation of the two-way linking as a win for all parties."

This type of linking between articles and data is one of the pillars of Article of the Future, Elsevier's on-going program to improve the format of the scientific article. Elsevier collaborates with more than thirty data repositories, and is continually looking to collaborate with other relevant organizations.

Example articles with reciprocal Dryad-ScienceDirect linking:

• R. Alexander Pyron, John J. Wiens, A large-scale phylogeny of Amphibia including over 2800 species, and a revised classification of extant frogs, salamanders, and caecilians, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Volume 61, Issue 2, November 2011, pp. 543-583, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105579031100279X.
  
• Peter J. Unmack, Gerald R. Allen, Jerald B. Johnson, Phylogeny and biogeography of rainbowfishes (Melanotaeniidae) from Australia and New Guinea, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Volume 67, Issue 1, April 2013, pp. 15-27, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790312004976.
  
• James Starrett, Marshal Hedin, Nadia Ayoub, Cheryl Y. Hayashi, Hemocyanin gene family evolution in spiders (Araneae), with implications for phylogenetic relationships and divergence times in the infraorder Mygalomorphae, Gene, Volume 524, Issue 2, July 2013, pp. 175-186, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378111913005040.
  
• Mercy Y. Akinyi, Jenny Tung, Maamun Jeneby, Nilesh B. Patel, Jeanne Altmann, Susan C. Alberts, Role of grooming in reducing tick load in wild baboons (Papio cynocephalus), Animal Behaviour, Volume 85, Issue 3, March 2013, pp. 559-568, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347212005611.

Journals including reciprocal Dryad-ScienceDirect linking

The first 28 journals hosted on ScienceDirect to feature the reciprocal linking option, displayed in the right hand of the online article page view, are:

Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution; Animal Behaviour; Fisheries Research; Applied Soil Ecology; Behavioural Processes; Biological Conservation; Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part D - Genomics and Proteomics; Ecological Indicators; Fungal Genetics and Biology; Hormones and Behavior; Infection, Genetics and Evolution; International Journal for Parasitology; Journal of Human Evolution; Marine Genomics; Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology; Quaternary Science Reviews; Science of the Total Environment; Soil Biology and Biochemistry; Toxicon; Gene; Journal of Informetrics; Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology; Trends in Ecology and Evolution; Journal of Biomedical Informatics; Theoretical Population Biology; Protist; Environmental Pollution; Virus Research.

About Dryad

The Dryad Digital Repository is a curated resource that makes the data underlying scientific and medical publications discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. By providing a general-purpose home for a wide diversity of data types, Dryad benefits individual researchers, educators and students as well as a diversity of stakeholder organizations. Dryad is a member-based nonprofit organization incorporated in North Carolina, USA with users around the world.

About ScienceDirect

ScienceDirect is a world premier full-text scientific database offering journal articles and book chapters from more than 2,500 peer-reviewed journals and 11,000 books. The platform offers search and retrieval functionalities that enable users to work effectively in the knowledge discovery process. ScienceDirect aims to revolutionize the traditional format of the academic paper; interactive elements, enhanced online-readability, alerting services, and linking options to external datasets help researchers to build insights at the article level. ScienceDirect now has more than 10 million users; its wide reach makes it an ideal place for scientists to publish and disseminate their research findings.

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect, Scopus, SciVal, Reaxys, ClinicalKey and Mosby's Suite, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, helping research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group plc, a world leading provider of professional information solutions. The group employs more than 30,000 people, including more than 15,000 in North America. Reed Elsevier Group plc is owned equally by two parent companies, Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. Their shares are traded on the London, Amsterdam and New York Stock Exchanges using the following ticker symbols: London: REL; Amsterdam: REN; New York: RUK and ENL.

Media contact
Dale Seaton
Executive Publisher, Journals
Elsevier
+1-212-633-3862
d.seaton@elsevier.com