For Dr. Troy D. Wood, who studies plant metabolomics at the University at Buffalo, the value of data sharing lies in its power to accelerate discovery and fuel collaboration. Along with a team of colleagues, Dr. Wood chose to publish the data “Chemical informatics combined with Kendrick mass analysis to enhance annotation and identify pathways in soybean metabolomics” with Dryad early in 2025.

The Dryad advantage

Several factors contributed to that decision. The publishing journal had a data availability requirement in place. Because the work was a result of collaboration across multiple institutions, no one institutional repository fit the bill. “Given these factors, and my previous positive experience, Dryad was the clear choice,” Dr. Wood said. And since the University of Buffalo is a Dryad partner, the Data Publishing Charge (DPC) was fully sponsored.

According to Dr. Wood, one of Dryad’s most valuable features is its experienced data curation team — real people who provide hands-on support for every dataset to ensure quality, consistency, usability, and FAIR data standards. For this dataset specifically, a Dryad data curator identified a missing data folder, “a great quality control step,” said Wood. They also offered an “excellent suggestion” to expand the user instructions to improve accessibility — something that is especially important for those unfamiliar with the specific instrument and data formats used. That feedback was incorporated into the final submission and ultimately enhanced the dataset’s clarity and usability, Wood said.

Data and the future of research

The research examines metabolomics and metabolic pathways in soybean plants and is particularly relevant for studies analyzing plant phenotypes for adaptation to environmental stressors, particularly drought. The dataset might also serve as a useful reference for practitioners of mass spectrometry. It provides a practical example of how to apply the Kendrick Mass Defect principle to complex biological specimens.

Data sharing, he said, “has simplified working with researchers from other institutions, especially trainees from overseas who spend weeks or months in the lab acquiring data locally, but will need access to the data subsequent to their return to their home institutions. I can see us using this more extensively in the near-term.”

By sharing this dataset, Dr. Wood hopes to support ongoing work in plant stress biology and metabolomics, while encouraging others in the field to adopt open data practices for the benefit of the wider scientific community. While in the past metabolomics researchers shared mass spectrometry data upon written request, today, public repositories have become commonplace. That has had a meaningful impact on the field, empowering researchers to mine publicly available data to identify common metabolites, which can help to validate findings or refine hypotheses. These evolving norms “should accelerate all kinds of discovery” in the field, Wood said.

Share your data story. Have you shared open data or re-used others’ publicly-available data? Share your story with us at partnerships [at] datadryad.org.

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NOTE: This blog is based on a case study prepared as part of Dryad’s work with the NIH GREI working group.