Dryad’s new governance structure and cost recovery plan emerged from a consultation process that culminated in a meeting of the Dryad Interim Board in Vancouver, Canada in July 2011.  This was the third and final meeting of this temporary governing body. Over 25 representatives from a diversity of journals, societies, publishers and other organizations met at the University of British Columbia to review progress and chart the next steps for Dryad.

Vancouver maple tree, courtesy of Marcel Holyoak, via Flickr

In addition to the governance and sustainability plans, participants also made progress on a number of important policy issues. Several of these bear on what content Dryad will accept:

• Software: Dryad is intended to provide a repository for code only where it does not otherwise have a better home. It is expected that Dryad will be used primarily for snapshots or “one-off” scripts that would otherwise be lost, rather than the maintenance of ongoing software projects that would be better hosted by a public version control system.
• Other integral and supplementary materials:  Dryad will accept the full range of content that is currently hosted by the journal/publisher as Supplemental Online Material, and not restrict the repository contents strictly to data. This option will be provided to those journals or publishers that wish to take advantage of it.  Whether it be software, data, or other material, authors will still be asked to release rights to the content under the terms of CCZero.
• Qualifying publications:  All content in Dryad must be documented by a publication. The Interim Board expanded the definition of qualifying publications to include not just those that have undergone peer review, but any legitimate publication with expert vetting, such as a doctoral thesis.

The report of the meeting is available here.   We extend particular thanks for the success of the meeting to the members of the interim Executive Committee: Marcel Holyoak, William Michener, Allen Moore and Michael Whitlock (chair and host at UBC).