Sharing Publication-Related Data and Materials: Responsibilities of Authorship in the Life Sciences

The publication of experimental results and sharing of research materials related to those results have long been key elements of the life sciences. Over time, standard practices have emerged from communities of life scientists to facilitate the presentation and sharing of different types of data and materials. However, there recently has been concern that, in practice, publication-related data and materials are not always readily available to the research community. Moreover, in some fields, questions have arisen about whether standard practices really exist or whether putative standards are accepted by and commonly applied to all authors.