As we announced earlier, Dryad will be introducing data publishing fees at the beginning of September. Here’s why we are doing this, and what it will mean for you as a submitter.

Why?

The Data Publishing Charge (DPC) is a modest fee that recovers the basic costs of curation and preservation, and allows Dryad to make its contents freely available for researchers and educators at any institution anywhere in the world.  DPCs provide a broad and fair revenue stream that scales with the costs of maintaining the repository, and helps ensure that Dryad can keep its commitment to long-term accessibility.

Who pays?

There are three cases:

1. The DPC is waived in its entirety if the submitter is based in a country classified by the World Bank as a low-income or lower-middle-income economy.
2. For many journals, the society or publisher will sponsor the DPC on behalf of their authors; you can see whether this applies to your journal here (the list is growing quickly, so be sure to check back when you are ready to submit new data).
3. In the absence of a waiver or a sponsor, the DPC is US$80, payable by the submitter.  Payment details are accepted upon submission, but the fee will not be charged unless and until the data package is accepted for publication.
   

Two additional fees may apply. Submitters will be charged for data packages in excess of 10GB (US$15 for the first additional GB and US$10 for each GB thereafter), to cover additional storage costs.  If there is no sponsor, and the data package is associated with a journal lacking integrated data and manuscript submission, the submitter will be charged US$10 to cover the additional curation costs.

Submitters may use grant funds, institutional funds, or any other source, as long as payment can be made using a credit card or PayPal.  We regret that submitters cannot be invoiced for single submissions – but please do contact us if you are interested in purchasing a larger group of vouchers for future use.  We encourage researchers to inquire with librarians at their institution about available funding sources, and to budget data publication funds for future submissions into their grants, as part of their data management plan.

Note that there will be no charges for submissions made before the introduction of DPCs in September, regardless of when the data package is accepted for publication.

Help us spread the word

If your organization does not yet sponsor Data Publication Charges, or is not yet a Member, you may wish to let them know that you feel data archiving deserves their financial support.  Dryad offers a variety of flexible payment plans that provide for volume discounts, and there are additional discounts for Member organizations.  Organizations need not be publishers. Universities, funders, libraries and even individual research groups can purchase bundles of single-use vouchers that will cover the DPCs for data packages associated with publications appearing in any journal, as well as other publication types such as monographs and theses.  Prospective sponsors and Members may contact director@datadryad.org to figure out what will work best for their circumstances.

We are grateful for all the input we have received into our sustainability planning, and look forward to the continued support of our community in carrying out our nonprofit mission for many long years to come.  If you have questions or suggestions, please leave a comment or contact us here.