Partnering to Advance Research – Dryad

UW-Madison is now a member of Dryad, an open-access data repository where researchers can publish and publicly share research data. Dryad was started by a community of researchers and is used worldwide to meet funder and publisher mandates for data publication. As yet another great example of the effort to advance emerging research, the Libraries are pleased to share that depositing in Dryad is now free to UW-Madison researchers, thanks to a membership pursued in partnership between the Libraries and DoIT.

“Addressing public access to data at scale for the campus is an exciting challenge and opportunity that requires leveraging expertise and resources across campus to build out sustainable and easy-to-use solutions,” says Cameron Cook, Digital Curation Coordinator and chair of Research Data Services. “We’re thrilled to have such great partners in DoIT, who are helping us accomplish this work.

Dryad has been a repository UW-Madison has recommended for several years. A two-pronged repository pilot, Dryad is the first part, which is intended to make it easier for researchers to comply and share data. The second phase will improve the deposit capacity and data transfer capabilities of MINDS@UW, enabling improved access/experience for larger datasets. The goal is to continue supporting, managing, preserving, and making research data and other outputs available. 

“This pilot will help us learn how two important resources can help UW-Madison researchers,” explains Jan Cheetham, Director of Research Cyberinfrastructure at DoIT. “Dryad and MINDS@UW, help address the growing requirement for data sharing many researchers face.”

Quick facts about Dryad (from Dryad!):

• Complete journal integration – Dryad leads the way in data publishing through partnerships with major publishers and journals to make manuscript submission easy.
• Compliance with funder mandates – Dryad’s combination of services meets funder data sharing mandates.
• Track the reach of your data – Dryad provides metrics that measure the number of times an individual data publication has been viewed, cited, and downloaded.
• Seamlessly connect software and data –when researchers submit to Dryad, they have the option to upload code, scripts, and software packages which will be automatically sent to Zenodo.
• First-rate data quality – a professional curator reviews all data submitted to Dryad for data and metadata integrity.
• Maximized data discovery – Dryad’s data publications are citable, shareable, and discoverable through major indexing services like Google Dataset Search and more.
• Robust infrastructure and preservation services – all data published in Dryad are safely preserved in a Core Trust Seal-certified repository.

Research Data Services (RDS) is an interdisciplinary organization committed to advancing research data management practice on the UW-Madison campus. We focus on providing researchers with the tools and resources that support their efforts to store, analyze and share data.