The deposition and sharing of research materials is an often-overlooked but crucial aspect of the debate on open data, even though deposition is straightforward and free of charge (see Nature 546, 327; 2017). Although Nature, for instance, has a clear policy on materials sharing and deposition (see go.nature.com/2tj3hv5), sending a materials request to a busy lab can incur delays or be unproductive if, say, the first author has moved on. Moreover, good reagents will be requested hundreds of times, but few labs want to process that many requests.
Centralized repositories such as Addgene, a non-profit global repository that archives and distributes plasmids for scientists (www.addgene.org), are equipped to handle the widespread sharing of materials. Such repositories stand to accelerate science by helping the community to make the most of useful reagents and promote scientific reproducibility.
Materials sharing is also good for the impact of both scientists and journals. For example, papers for which authors have deposited a plasmid with Addgene receive substantially more citations than those that have not (see go.nature.com/2u7ecyo).
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J.K. Is Executive Director of Addgene, the repository mentioned in the Correspondence.
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Kamens, J. Open data: enforce materials sharing. Nature 547, 403 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/547403a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/547403a
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