Last month, Nature Publishing Group welcomed its newest journal, Scientific Data — a peer-reviewed, open-access publication designed to provide a better way to share and explain data. Scientific Data publishes Data Descriptors, a new article type that allows authors to describe important datasets in detail, making them more accessible and more easily reusable. Importantly, Data Descriptors help to give the credit deserved to the scientists who share.

Because Scientific Data articles do not contain extensive interpretative analysis or new findings, they can be used to publish a wide range of valuable datasets. All publications are released immediately under one of three Creative Commons licences, supported by an article processing charge paid by authors. The actual data files are hosted at external repositories under open terms, and Scientific Data works with authors to find the best repository for each dataset. In addition, publications at Scientific Data have unique features that are designed to maximize the discoverability and reusability of each published dataset, such as formal data citations and curated machine-readable metadata to aid advanced users and data miners.

Scientific Data has been initially developed in close collaboration with data-sharing advocates in the life and environmental science communities, and its first publications reflect these roots. However, the concepts that underlie Scientific Data — promoting reproducible, collaborative science and giving due credit to scientists — have broad currency across scientific disciplines.

The editorial team of Scientific Data is now exploring how it can best serve the physical sciences by learning about the particular data-sharing challenges faced by each community.

Indeed, the physics community has its own, unique history of promoting sharing — notably the arXiv preprint server, used extensively for more than twenty years by physicists in various disciplines. Some major projects routinely share outputs, such as the NASA missions that make their data publicly available following a short period of private analysis by the mission scientists. But many other important datasets, particularly from smaller-scale projects or individual labs, are not normally shared.

Nature Physics, like all Nature journals, encourages the sharing of data and materials; our policy stipulates that, where requested, these be made “promptly available to others without undue qualifications”. Scientific Data complements this policy by rewarding authors who are willing to go above and beyond our standards — for example, by providing more in-depth descriptions and fuller release of important datasets already analysed in previous publications.

We feel that Scientific Data will be just as relevant and valuable in the physics community as it is elsewhere, and invite physicists who are interested in promoting the sharing of data to get in touch with the Scientific Data team: scientificdata@nature.com. Share with us your ideas for how we might shape this concept of data publication, to best work for our community.