The sharing of research materials: do you?

About once a month I receive a complaint, often from a frustrated young investigator, that after multiple requests he or she was unsuccessful in obtaining research materials that had been used in work published in Plant Physiology. I raised this issue at our summer editorial board meeting and was surprised to learn how many board members had experienced problems in obtaining research materials used in work published across the full range of top plant journals. The sharing of materials is an explicitly stated expectation of authors publishing in Plant Physiology as it is for nearly all journals that publish plant research. As stated in our Instructions for Authors, “Plant Physiology requires that all materials described in a manuscript be made freely available to academic investigators for non-commercial research purposes,” and the author responsible for material distribution must be listed for all submitted manuscripts. (There is a provision for expensive or scarce material: “The provision of novel enzymes, antibodies, and material products described in the manuscript can be reasonably limited in case that substantial effort is required for isolation.”) Board members had numerous creative suggestions about how to deal with the problem; however, because these suggestions were in the majority egregiously libelous if not out right illegal, they did not suggest a way toward a solution but left no doubt about the members' strong feelings toward those who would withhold research materials. Most researchers have the best intentions to distribute the requested material, but busy schedules and time commitments often push requests to the background. It is important for us to remember that we will be the requestor some day and will be expecting a timely response. We all understand that the sharing of resources, both intellectual and physical, is integral for the progression of research in plant biology. Many funding agencies recognize this and stipulate in their grant conditions that “significant findings from research and education activities it supports to be promptly submitted for publication” and that investigators “share with other researchers…the data, samples, physical collections and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of the work” (National Science Foundation, 2007, p. 27). The Committee on Responsibilities of Authorship in the Biological Sciences, formed in 2001 by the National Academies, held a workshop in 2002 on “Community Standards for Sharing Publication-Related Data and Materials” (Committee on Responsibilities of Authorship in the Biological Sciences, 2003a). The Committee found that within the life sciences community there are “commonly held ideas and values about the role of publication in the scientific process” (p. 3) that include the expectation of authors to “release data and materials to enable others to verify or replicate published findings” (p. 4). The report is summarized by five principles (listed below) that outline which data should be included in a publication or publicly accessible database and material availability. Recommendations on how these principles can be achieved are discussed in detail in the report, including the use of material transfer agreements and data repositories (for review, see Committee on Responsibilities of Authorship in the Biological Sciences, 2003b). Data and Software Principle 1. Authors should include in their publications the data, algorithms, or other information that is central or integral to the publication—that is, whatever is necessary to support the major claims of the paper and would enable one skilled in the art to verify or replicate the claims. Principle 2. If central or integral information cannot be included in the publication for practical reasons (for example, because a dataset is too large), it should be made freely (without restriction on its use for research purposes and at no cost) and readily accessible through other means (for example, online). Moreover, when necessary to enable further research, integral information should be made available in a form that enables it to be manipulated, analyzed, and combined with other scientific data. Principle 3. If publicly accessible repositories for data have been agreed on by a community of researchers and are in general use, the relevant data should be deposited in one of these repositories by the time of publication. Materials Principle 4. Authors of scientific publications should anticipate which materials integral to their publications are likely to be requested and should state in the “Materials and Methods” section or elsewhere how to obtain them. Principle 5. If a material integral to a publication is patented, the provider of the material should make the material available under a license for research use. Plant Physiology facilitates access to information by posting accepted manuscripts on Plant Physiology Preview, releasing all content after 12 months and providing full and immediate access to articles by our Open Access initiatives that automatically provide Open Access to all papers communicated by ASPB members (Ort, 2006; http://www.aspb.org/pressreleases/oaformembers.cfm), and offering non-member authors the option to purchase Open Access (Raikhel et al., 2005; Ort, 2006; http://www.aspb.org/publications/openaccess.cfm). To assist in the distribution of materials, datasets and novel DNA sequences must be deposited in a publicly accessible database such as GenBank; a list of several suggested services that can accept seed and DNA stocks is provided. Plant Physiology has also started a partnership with The Arabidopsis Information Resource to facilitate the addition of Arabidopsis molecular and genetic data to the database and increase distribution of this information (Grennan and Ort, 2008). This raises an interesting question: In view of the fact that the sharing of materials is a requirement of publishing in Plant Physiology, does the unwillingness to supply materials constitute an ethics violation?