Scientific data

It took PhD student Jelle van der Hilst some time to realize that getting data is easy; working out whether they’re useful is harder.

Jean Fan and her team launched a digital campaign using YouTube, GitHub and blogs to make a computational-biology tool accessible to all. Here’s what they learnt.

Lab members are typically in charge of their own data and notes. But institutional memory is better served if the team works together, say Stephen McInturff and Victor Adenis.

Participatory-science projects bring amateurs and experts together to collect and crunch data, and even design research.

Street children in Africa and a site engineer at a marine-biology research station are among those recognized in an alternative to the United Kingdom’s Research Excellence Framework.

State your main finding in your title, and don’t forget to use the word ‘but’, says Bruce Kirchoff.

Ensuring that your work is reproducible is not as daunting or complicated as you might think. Experts share their tips.

Study of nearly 7,000 scientists also finds that more than half engage in ‘questionable research practices’.

Expert tips for novice programmers.

For Nicholas DeVito, Georgia Richards and Peter Inglesby, custom webscrapers have driven their research — and their collaborations.

Researchers are rushing to pool resources and data sets to tackle the pandemic, but the new era of openness comes with concerns around privacy, ownership and ethics.

Researchers share their tips for working in environments with unreliable infrastructure.

Open science can lead to greater collaboration, increased confidence in findings and goodwill between researchers.

Papers should be published according to the merit of their scientific contribution, not the polish of their presentation, says Michael White.

Keeping your research data freely available is crucial for open science — and your funding could depend on it.

Programming is an exercise in learning how to learn. Start small, practise often and don’t be afraid to make mistakes, advises Atma Ivancevic.

Opting for open access means considering costs, journal prestige and career implications.

To write better, remember that your science is exciting, says Eric J. Buenz.

Citation analysis picks out new truth in Newton's aphorism that science 'stands on the shoulders of giants'.

An improved architecture and enthusiastic user base are driving uptake of the open-source web tool.

The free IPython notebook makes data analysis easier to record, understand and reproduce.

Video is an engaging way to make your research more accessible, says Adrian A. Smith.

Nature backs the Enabling FAIR Data initiative and requires authors to deposit data in community repositories.

Who benefits from sharing data? The scientists of future do, as data sharing today enables new science tomorrow. Far from being mere rehashes of old datasets, evidence shows that studies based on analyses of previously published data can achieve just as much impact as original projects.

The tool, called Google Dataset Search, should help researchers to find the data they need more easily.

Officials pledge support for European-led ‘Plan S’ to make research papers immediately free to read — but it’s unclear whether China will adopt all the plan’s policies.

Eleven research funders in Europe announce ‘Plan S’ to make all scientific works free to read as soon as they are published.

Several big biomedical companies have been caught out and punished.