PNNL

Abstract

The data production of scientific studies is growing at a nearly exponential rate, leading to challenges in disseminating primary experimental results for peer review and public access, while simultaneously providing information that enables reproducing the studies and/or analyzing the results in a proper context. Recent mandates from various public funding agencies are requiring data release plans be included as a project goal. This requirement is coupled with an increased need for transparency in complex research, as evidenced by the data release policies of respected peer-reviewed journals. This combination of good scientific citizenship and funding requirements has brought the data distribution issue to the domain of scientific information management researchers. Herein, we present a web site designed to address these goals, the Biological MS Data and Software Distribution Center. This site leverages vast amounts of pre-existing experimental metadata stored in our purpose-built data management system to streamline the process of making these data available.