By Natalia Gonzalez Blanco Serrano ’24
Northwestern boasts over 23,000 students, almost 4,000 academic staff, and 11 schools all of which are constantly contributing to their own academic fields through research. Thankfully, the school provides its students and faculty with the resources to organize their data and more easily comply with publisher and funder mandates.
Dryad is an online, community-led data repository for researchers to share the datasets that underlie and inform their research. It is used by many universities across the U.S., providing a common framework to share research data that support their research findings.
Although the Libraries have long offered access to Arch—the home-grown open access repository for Northwestern research—researchers still needed a place to store large datasets. “Dryad is a good place for people to store their digital data,” said data services librarian Kelsey Rydland. “It fills the hole that was missing from Arch,” and at the best time possible.
That’s because, starting January 25, all researchers who receive federal funding for their projects will be required to share their datasets publicly, according to a new policy established by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Making data publicly available removes intellectual barriers, allowing researchers to build on existing data and others to access and reproduce findings—a crucial component of scientific research. Academics can use data stored in Dryad to build on the wealth of knowledge their colleagues across the country are finding and producing.
For a University that received $488.6 million in federal NIH funding this past year, this change in data sharing policy affects a large portion of research happening on campus. Dryad is available to all Northwestern-affiliated researchers at no additional cost.
To learn more about using Dryad, contact Kelsey Rydland or lead data management specialist Tobin Magle in Research Computing Services.
Natalia Gonzalez Blanco Serrano is a Medill School of Journalism junior