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authors & referees </authors/> > Editorial policies
</authors/editorial_policies/> > Availability of data & materials


  Availability of data and materials

The policy outlined on this page applies to Nature journals (those with
the word "Nature" in their title). NPG publishes many other journals,
each of which has separate publication policies described on its
website. A current list of these journals, with links to each journal's
homepage is available </authors/author_services/about_npg.html>. 


  Availability of data and materials

An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to
replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. Therefore, a
condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are
required to make materials, data and associated protocols available in a
publicly accessible database (as detailed in the sections below on this
page) or, where one does not exist, to readers promptly on request. Any
restrictions on the availability of materials or information must be
disclosed at the time of submission of the manuscript, and the methods
section of the manuscript itself should include details of how materials
and information may be obtained, including any restrictions that may
apply. One preferred form of disclosure is a link from the methods
section to a copy of the relevant Material Transfer Agreement (MTA)
form, which is hosted as Supplementary Information on the journal's web
site. Authors may charge a reasonable fee to cover the costs of
producing and distributing materials. If materials are to be distributed
by a for-profit company, this should be stated in the paper.

Nature journal editorials providing more detail for these policies:

Nature Cell Biology: Policy update (sharing materials)
<http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/v7/n3/pdf/ncb0305-203.pdf>

Nature Chemical Biology: Molecular cross-fertilization
<http://www.nature.com/nchembio/journal/v2/n2/full/nchembio0206-53.html>

Nature Cell Biology: Sharing science
<http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/v8/n5/pdf/ncb0506-425.pdf>

Nature: Illuminating the black box
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7098/full/442001a.html>

Nature Cell Biology: Nothing to hide (data not shown)
<http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/v8/n6/pdf/ncb0606-541a.pdf>

Nature Genetics: Access to materials
<http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n10/full/ng1004-1025.html>

Nature: Methods in full
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7129/full/445684a.html>
(comments on this methods format are welcome at Nautilus
<http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/03/methods_in_full.html>, the
author blog).

Nature Methods: Social software
<http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v4/n3/full/nmeth0307-189.html> (comments
on this Nature Methods policy are welcome at Methagora
<http://blogs.nature.com/nmeth/methagora/2007/02/social_software.html>,
the Nature Methods blog).

Nature Chemical Biology: A new look for chemical information
<http://www.nature.com/nchembio/journal/v3/n6/full/nchembio0607-297.html>
(comments are welcome at Nautilus
<http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/05/a_new_look_for_chemical_inform.html>,
the author blog).

Nature Neuroscience: Got data?
<http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v10/n8/full/nn0807-931.html> (comments
welcome at this Nautilus post
<http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/08/august_editorials_on_sharing_n.html>).

Nature Genetics: Compete, collaborate, compel
<http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v39/n8/full/ng0807-931.html> (comments
welcome at this Nautilus post
<http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/08/august_editorials_on_sharing_n.html>).

Top of page <#top>


  Mutant strains and cell lines

For materials such as mutant strains and cell lines, authors are
expected to use established public repositories and provide relevant
accession numbers (for example, Jackson Laboratory
<http://www.jax.org/>, Mutant Mouse Regional Resource Centers
<http://www.mmrrc.org/>, American Type Culture Collection
<http://www.lgcpromochem.com/atcc/>, UK Stem Cell Bank
<http://www.ukstemcellbank.org.uk/>, and so on) wherever possible.

Peer-reviewers may be asked to comment on the terms of access to
materials, methods and/or datasets; Nature journals reserve the right to
refuse publication in cases where authors are unable to provide adequate
assurances that essential resources will be made freely available to the
community.

Relevant editorials in Nature journals:

Nature Genetics: How to discuss ancestry and ethnicity
<http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n6/full/ng0604-541.html>

Nature Genetics: Criteria for association
<http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v37/n11/full/ng1105-1153.html>

 

 

Top of page <#top>


  Sequences, structures and 'omics'

Papers reporting protein or DNA sequences and molecular structures will
not be accepted without an accession number to Genbank
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genbank/>/EMBL
<http://www.ebi.ac.uk/embl/>/DDBJ <http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/>, Protein
DataBank <http://www.rcsb.org./pdb/home/home.do>, SWISS-PROT
<http://www.ebi.ac.uk/swissprot/> or other appropriate, identified,
publicly available database in general use in the field that gives free
access to researchers from the date of publication, as described in the
Nature editorials listed below. The published paper must state the
accession codes, and all such material must be freely available on and
after the publication date. Please note that this policy includes even
short stretches of novel sequence information such as epitopes,
functional domains, genetic markers, or haplotypes. Short novel
sequences must include surrounding sequence information to provide
context. The sequences of all RNAi, antisense and morpholino probes must
be included in the paper or deposited in a public database, with the
accession number quoted. When an unpublished library is included in the
paper, at minimum the sequences of the probes central to the conclusions
of the paper must be presented.

Authors of papers describing structures of biological macromolecules
must provide atomic coordinates and related experimental data (structure
factor amplitudes/intensities for crystal structures, or restraints for
NMR structures) upon request of editors for the purposes of evaluating
the manuscript, if they are not already freely accessible in a publicly
available and recognized database (for example, Protein DataBank
<http://www.rcsb.org./pdb/home/home.do>, Nucleic Acids Database
<http://ndbserver.rutgers.edu/> or Biological Magnetic Resonance
Databank <http://www.bmrb.wisc.edu/>). Five separate copies of these
data should be provided to the editors in an appropriate format (for
example, CD or DVD) for the purposes of peer-review.

Accessibility must be designated "for immediate release on publication".
In practice, this means the author should authorize Protein DataBank
release on the Wednesday of (or before) online or print publication.
(The journal office informs authors of the publication date as soon as
articles are scheduled.)

Proteomics databases recommended by Nature journals include
the International Molecular Exchange consortium
<http://imex.sourceforge.net/>; PRIDE <http://www.ebi.ac.uk/pride/>;
IntAct <http://www.ebi.ac.uk/intact/site/index.jsf>; PeptideAtlas
<http://www.peptideatlas.org/>; Tranche
<http://www.proteomecommons.org/dev/dfs/users/index.html>; and the
Global Proteome Machine Organization
<http://www.thegpm.org/GPMDB/index.html>.

Nature journal editorials providing more detail for these policies: 

Nature: New policy for structural data
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v394/n6689/full/394105b0.html>

Nature: Rules of genome access
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v404/n6776/full/404317a0.html>

Nature Medicine: Structural Integrity
<http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v11/n2/full/nm0205-103.html>

Nature: Crystal Clear
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7046/full/4351138b.html>

Nature Cell Biology: Whither RNAi?
<http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/v5/n6/pdf/ncb0603-490.pdf>

Nature Biotechnology: Democratizing proteomics data
<http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n3/full/nbt0307-262b.html> (Feedback
and comments on this March 2007 Nature Biotechnology policy are welcome
at Nautilus
<http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/03/nature_biotechnology_democrati.html>,
the author blog.) Also Time for leadership
<http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n8/full/nbt0807-821.html>,
providing an update (August 2007) to the proposals in the previous
editorial (comments from authors and other scientists in the field are
welcome at this Nautilus post
<http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/08/nature_journal_policies_on_pro.html>).

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology: Name that gene!
<http://www.nature.com/nsmb/journal/v14/n8/full/nsmb0807-681.html> (Comments
welcome on Nautilus
<http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/08/august_editorials_on_sharing_n.html>.)

Nature: Shared genomes
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v450/n7171/full/450762b.html>,
describing the Nature journals' Creative Commons licence for
genome sequences (6 December 2007.) Comments welcome on Nautilus
<http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/12/expanded_licence_for_reuse_of.html>.

 

 

Top of page <#top>


  Microarrays

Please see the MGED open letter
<http://www.mged.org/Workgroups/MIAME/miame_checklist.html> specifying
microarray standards. Authors submitting manuscripts containing
microarray data must either provide accession number and URL or supply
the data as Supplementary Information on CD at time of submission. The
data must be MIAME-compliant and supplied in a form that is widely
accessible, with the completed checklist also placed on the CD. If data
are provided via CD at submission rather than as links to database
entries, five copies are required so that they can be sent to
peer-reviewers.

Nature journals require submission of microarray data to the GEO
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/> or ArrayExpress
<http://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress> databases, with accession numbers at
or before acceptance of the paper for publication.

Nature journal editorials providing more detail for these policies:

Nature: Microarray standards at last
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v419/n6905/full/419323a.html>

Nature Immunology: Microarray policy
<http://www.nature.com/ni/journal/v4/n2/full/ni0203-93.html>

Nature Cell Biology: Microarray data standards
<http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/v4/n11/full/ncb1102-e243.html> (the
third editorial on this web page)

Top of page <#top>


  Other supporting data

Any supporting data sets for which there is no public repository must be
made available to referees at submission and any interested reader on
and after the publication date from the authors directly, the author
providing a URL to be used in the paper on publication.

Such material must be hosted on an accredited independent site (URL and
accession numbers to be provided by the author), or sent to the Nature
journal at submission, either uploaded via the journal's online
submission service, or if the files are too large or in an unsuitable
format for this purpose, on CD/DVD (five copies). Such material cannot
solely be hosted on an author's personal or institutional web site.

After publication, readers who encounter a persistent refusal by the
authors to comply with these guidelines should contact the chief editor
of the Nature journal concerned, with "materials complaint" and
publication reference of the article as part of the subject line. In
cases where editors are unable to resolve a complaint, the journal
reserves the right to refer the correspondence to the author's funding
institution and/or to publish a statement of formal correction, linked
to the publication, that readers have been unable to obtain necessary
materials or reagents to replicate the findings.

Top of page <#top>

pdf The entire guide for Editorial Policies is available in PDF format
</authors/gta.pdf>.


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