Dryad is excited to announce a partnership with openRxiv to enable an integration with the preprint server bioRxiv. Beginning today, authors posting preprints to bioRxiv will have the opportunity to upload their data and metadata to Dryad at the same time. The relationship brings together two independent non-profit organizations, both working to advance scholarship through Open Science in ways that support research integrity and trust, and accelerate scientific advancement. 

Why share research — and research data — sooner

The delay between the completion of research and the formal publication of research articles comes with a high price: it slows the pace of scientific advancement, wastes researchers’ time and grant dollars, and can even cost lives. Preprint servers like bioRxiv and medRxiv cut down on those delays, enabling researchers to share early-stage articles before and during peer review. That allows for more rapid innovation, broader, more immediate community feedback, and earlier application of findings where appropriate.

But communicating science effectively takes more than research articles alone. Research outputs like data and code are vital to understanding, reproducing, reusing, and building upon scientific research. That’s where Dryad comes in. We provide research data curation, publication, and preservation services across all scientific disciplines and all data formats, with hands-on support for researchers who need it.

Together, openRxiv and Dryad can help to address two of the most pressing challenges facing scholarly communication today: speed, and reproducibility and trust.

How it works

For researchers, the process is simple. After posting a preprint, bioRxiv authors have the option to upload their research data directly to Dryad. Once forwarded to Dryad, each dataset undergoes our usual rigorous quality controls to ensure that it is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reproducible (FAIR). Dryad’s experienced data curators also check that data are appropriate for sharing, and do not include personal identifying details or dual-use research of concern.

Once published, the dataset and preprint are automatically linked on both platforms. Links to additional research outputs, such as code and the eventual peer-reviewed and published research article, are added as they become available, creating an accessible package with all the information necessary to reproduce, reuse, and build upon the research.

The importance of system integration

Integrating data availability into existing workflows helps to simplify the process for researchers and keep data sharing top-of-mind. For those reasons, Dryad has long partnered with scholarly journals to support data sharing. Now, we’re extending that strategy to preprint servers for the first time. This new relationship with bioRxiv allows us to offer data curation and publishing support earlier in the research communication process, while contributing to enhancing trust in other ways to publish research. The teams are working to extend the integration to medRxiv in the near future.

“Dryad is committed to supporting researchers with data preparation and sharing at all the moments they are ready to do so  – before, during, and after peer review,” said Dryad Executive Director Jennifer Gibson. “We’re so pleased to be able to support our preprinting authors with this collaboration and ensure our services may be accessed with ease when needed.”

“Working with Dryad makes it easy for preprint authors to share their data, and their verification process serves as a trust signal that reassures readers the data has been checked,” said Richard Server, co-founder of bioRxiv and medRxiv. “I’m excited about the positive impact this will have on our field.”

Already, more than 3,000 Dryad datasets reference preprints posted on bioRxiv and medRxiv. We expect to see those numbers increase as the new system integration makes data publication even easier.

Progress through partnership

Data sharing and early sharing are both vital to an accelerated, high-integrity, collaborative, and trusted research ecosystem. Together, these two non-profits, Dryad and openRxiv, are collaborating in new ways to make that vision not only possible, but practically achievable for busy researchers. 

You can read more about the Dryad openRxiv integration on the openRxiv blog. Learn more about how it works on the bioRxiv blog.