Journal instructions

This page collects examples of journal instructions to authors that refer to Dryad, as well as journal policies about data availability, and suggests the critical elements for citations to data in Dryad.

Elements of journal data policy
We recommend that journals provide explicit guidance to authors regarding data availability and data citation in order to promote best practice, including:

Identify relevant repositories
In the instructions to authors, describe criteria for allowable repositories such as public access, terms of reuse (licensing), guarantee of archival preservation, metadata standards, and community adoption, and name relevant repositories (incl. Dryad) for different datatypes.


 * Where it is named, please provide a link to the Dryad repository URL, http://www.datadryad.org/
 * For integrated journals, please let authors know when and how integrated data submission to Dryad will occur.

Include data identifiers and data citations in all forms of the final article
Dryad suggests, following BioMed Central recommendations, that the DOI be included as an in-text citation, and additionally that the full data citation be listed in the reference section of the article.
 * Example of data DOI in article text (the full URL is preferred over the shortened form of the DOI):
 * Data available from the Dryad Digital Repository: http://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.t903h
 * Example of data citation to be included in references:
 * Sadd BM (2011) Data from: Food-environment mediates the outcome of specific interactions between a bumblebee and its trypanosome parasite. Dryad Digital Repository. http://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.t903h

Best practices resources for journals:
 * Cousijn H, et al: A Data Citation Roadmap for Scientific Publishers - https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2018.259
 * Presents a practical roadmap for scholarly publishers to implement data citation in accordance with the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles (JDDCP)
 * Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines from the Center for Open Science
 * Citing Data in Journal Articles using JATS (Journal Article Tag Suite)

Links to sample journal articles illustrating different data citation locations and formats

 * Article with link to Dryad via banner widget in Figures & Data tab, Data Accessibility statement, and Reference List
 * See more about journal widget options
 * Article with links to Dryad data in Materials and Methods, Figures, and Reference List
 * Article with link to Dryad data in Materials and Methods
 * Article with link to Dryad via Data Availability statement above abstract
 * Article with Dryad data link in Data Accessibility statement
 * Article with Dryad link in header
 * Article with links to Dryad data in Data Accessibility statement and References
 * Article with link to Dryad data in Data Accessibility statement at end of Appendices

Examples of journal data policies
The Joint Data Archiving Policy (JDAP) requires that supporting data be publicly available. This policy was adopted in a joint and coordinated fashion by many leading journals in the field of evolution in 2011, and JDAP has since been adopted by other journals across various disciplines. Additional journals are welcome to endorse and implement JDAP, or use it as a model.

Journals that adopt JDAP often recommend Dryad as an appropriate data repository, however the JDAP initiative is distinct from Dryad.


 * Joint Data Archiving Policy.

Springer Nature has defined a flexible set of journal data policies available for reuse by the research data community.

Representative list of journals that require data archiving
*list is not comprehensive or actively maintained


 * The American Naturalist
 * Biological Journal of the Linnean Society
 * Biology Letters
 * BMC Ecology
 * BMC Evolutionary Biology
 * BMJ Open
 * Ecological Applications andEcological Monographs
 * Evolution
 * Evolutionary Applications
 * Functional Ecology
 * Genetics
 * Heredity
 * Journal of Applied Ecology
 * Journal of Ecology
 * Journal of Evolutionary Biology
 * Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management
 * Journal of Heredity
 * Journal of Paleontology
 * Methods in Ecology and Evolution
 * Molecular Ecology
 * Molecular Ecology Resources
 * Nature
 * Nucleic Acids Research
 * Paleobiology
 * PLOS
 * Science
 * Systematic Biology

Representative list of journals with varied policies about data availability which reference the Dryad repository
*list is not comprehensive or actively maintained


 * The American Naturalist
 * Applications in Plant Sciences
 * Biology Letters
 * BMC Ecology
 * BMJ Open
 * British Ecological Society journals
 * Ecology Letters
 * Ecological Monographs
 * Ecology and Evolution
 * Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene
 * Evolution
 * Evolutionary Applications
 * Functional Ecology
 * GMS German Medical Science
 * Heredity
 * Herpetologica and Herpetological Monographs
 * Journal of Cell Science
 * Journal of Evolutionary Biology
 * Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management
 * Journal of Heredity
 * Journal of Paleontology
 * Molecular Ecology
 * Molecular Ecology Resources
 * Nature Publishing Group
 * North American Fauna
 * Open Heart
 * Paleobiology
 * PeerJ
 * PLOS Biology
 * PLOS Computational Biology
 * PLOS Genetics
 * PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases
 * PLOS ONE
 * PLOS Pathogens
 * Proceedings B
 * Royal Society Publishing
 * Scientific Data
 * Systematic Biology