Dear Psi-k community,

We are pleased to announce that the NoMaD (Novel Materials Discovery) Repository (https://nomad-repository.eu) is now officially recommended by Nature Publishing Group’s open access data journal Scientific Data (http://www.nature.com/sdata).

Scientific Data offers a new article type, the ‘Data Descriptor’, which has been specifically designed to publish peer-reviewed research data in an accessible way, so as to facilitate its interpretation and reuse. Publishing Data Descriptors enables data producers and curators to gain appropriate credit for their work, whilst also promoting reproducible research. The main goals of this journal are tightly aligned with that of NoMaD, focusing on making the data publicly accessible and encouraging re-use.

Today NoMaDjoins approximately 60 other data repositories from across the entire scientific spectrum as the first one from the materials-science community. NoMaDis now recommended by Scientific Data to its authors for providing stable archiving and long-term preservation of materials data. From today researchers have the opportunity to deposit materials data to NoMaD, whilst submitting a Data Descriptor to Scientific Data. NoMaD provides peer reviewers with full (and confidential) access to the data during the review process. Upon publication, NoMaD will ensure the data is made freely accessible and preserved for the long term benefit of the research community.

We’re delighted to be working with Nature Publishing Group on this open initiative. We invite the materials data producing community to share their data by submitting them to NoMaD, gain credit for their data by submitting a Data Descriptor to Scientific Data, and contribute to this exciting open data effort.

The NoMaD team

NoMaD is a joint effort by the groups of Matthias Scheffler, Fritz-Haber-Institut (FHI), Berlin, Claudia Draxl, Physics Department of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HUB), and the Computer Center of the Max-Planck Society (RZG), Garching.