Nature has a special feature on data sharing, including an editorial and commentaries advocating for both pre- and post-publication of data. I have long been an advocate of data sharing, especially in the post-publication sense (I would argue this is really concurrent-publication data sharing) – and one can read my latest commentary in the Journal of Cheminformatics (DOI: 10.1186/1758-2946-1-2.
Data sharing has been slow in chemistry. Peter Murray-Rust and Henry rzepa have been the major advocates for enhanced publication – see their blogs (PMR and HSR) and lots of publications. Tony Williams (blog) has been advocating for more deposition of data within ChemSpider, and some positive response have occurred. But journals and AUTHORS have been slow to change – supporting materials is often lacking important information and is rarely of useful form – and I consider pdf to be just a slice above “non-useful”. We need to continue to evangelize this issue!
