WSU Researchers Have Greater Repository Features with New Dryad Rollout

WSU Libraries will supplement services for data storage and sharing, provided by WSU’s Research Exchange, with Dryad, an open data-publishing platform and nonprofit that serves all research disciplines and accepts data submissions in every field.

The libraries have joined Dryad as an institutional partner; the platform houses over 50,000 data publications connected to over 200,000 researchers with 70,000 international institutions and over 1,000 journals.

“With the institutional membership in Dryad, our researchers can take advantage of enhanced data curation, an expanded data application programming interface, journal integrations for easy submission and publication of datasets alongside manuscripts, and robust discovery of data, all with no cost to researchers,” said Alex Merrill, head of library systems and technical operations.

“Research Exchange can handle some data deposits, but Dryad provides options for larger datasets, and it is already integrated into the workflows for some journals,” said Digital Collections Librarian Talea Anderson. “Our membership with Dryad allows researchers to make data deposits without having to pay Dryad’s usual fees. The two services will hopefully complement each other, with Dryad being more focused on data and Research Exchange on a whole gamut of research and educational materials.”

Research Exchange has served as the university repository for years and is primarily focused on the eventual output of research and creative works by WSU faculty, staff, and students, Merrill said. In the past, this has traditionally been manuscripts or other fixed outputs of the work done on campus.

With federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health changing their policies for data management and sharing in the past several years, academic and other research institutions are seeing an uptick in requests for support in finding an acceptable data repository, Merrill said. The NIH website lists desirable characteristics for all data repositories that manage and share data resulting from federally funded research, including long-term sustainability, metadata, curation and quality assurance, free and easy access, broad and measured reuse, and more. Dryad is among the list of NIH-supported data-sharing repositories.

Research Exchange and Dryad both follow FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) principles of data management and stewardship; both meet the “desirable characteristics of repositories” that most federal agencies describe in their documentation and policies, Merrill said. But Dryad has several advantages over Research Exchange:

• The per-dataset limit through a browser is 300 gigabytes (1 terabyte with assistance) for Dryad, compared to the per-file limit of 5 gigabytes for Research Exchange.
• A researcher using Dryad has no storage limits, while Research Exchange has a 200-gigabyte storage limit per dataset.
• Dryad supports embargo and the peer-review process; Research Exchange supports embargo only.

“These data limits, coupled with active dataset curation performed by Dryad staff to ensure every submission is maximally set up for accessibility and reusability, make Dryad a desirable spot to deposit data,” Merrill said.

“I am grateful to all the donors to the Library Excellence Fund, which enhances our priorities and areas of greatest need,” said Interim Dean of Libraries Trevor Bond. “Their generosity made our Dryad membership possible, allowing us to support research faculty across the WSU system.”

To learn more about using Dryad, please see the libraries’ guide to data management plans, or email Merrill or Anderson directly.