Data publication: towards a database of everything

Journal articles as immutable, citable, archives of knowledge, have been, and continue to be, the mainstay of scholarly communication. Viewed by many scientists as the end product of their engagement in a piece of research, the "article" contains an argument or statement about an hypothesis, backed up by supporting data. However, as new technologies drive research toward larger and more complex datasets, these two features of the journal article are becoming increasingly disarticulated [1]. In some scientific disciplines – for example crystallography, astronomy and molecular biology – digital repositories have become important avenues for "publishing" data. This approach has found common cause with social and political forces that are arguing for greater accountability and transparency of science. The Open Science movement for the free use (and re-use) of data, results and protocols, is championed by many as the best way to improve the collective societal return on our investment in scientific research [2]. Data publication is widely recognised as being central to delivering this. But in truth, outside a handful of disciplines, publication of science data is the exception, not the rule.Data publication has the potential to deliver significant benefits from local to global scales. Organisations and research disciplines can benefit from increased recognition [3]. There are significant potential cost savings for funders through greater reuse of data [4], and economic benefits by stimulating entrepreneurial uses of data by commercial companies [5]. Data publication can help to discourage scientific misconduct [6], and in many cases (e.g. environmental and ecological data) provides the only outlet for data that are irreplaceable because of the unique circumstances in which they were collected. So why, when so much is to be gained from data publication, do scientists compromise scientific development, and effectively leave their work unfinished by not publishing their dat