The Plant Journal Actively Supports Open Science and Data Transparency

Abstract

An essential principle of academic research is that results of research and the resources developed are shared with the wider community. In the past, publishing the work in a peer-reviewed 
journal and adhering to journal guidelines with respect to sharing of materials such as plasmids, antibodies and seeds has been sufficient to ensure that this principle operates. However, technological advances have turned biology into a much more data-intensive 
science with very large datasets often a key part of the research. These datasets are a resource in their own right to be re-used and combined with other datasets for extraction of additional layers 
of insight and information. Because of their size, these datasets cannot be reported in the traditional way, embedded as tables within a paper, but instead are usually provided as supplemental files 
associated with the online version of the paper. While access to such an unprecedented amount of data is of immense value, in practice the accessibility of such “associated data” is fragmentary and meta-information concerning important experimen- tal details 
is often difficult to trace.