Data Descriptor Template

Scope Guidelines
Data Descriptors submitted to Scientific Data should provide detailed descriptions of valuable
research datasets, including the methods used to collect the data and technical analyses
supporting the quality of the measurements. Data Descriptors focus on helping others reuse data,
rather than testing hypotheses, or presenting new interpretations, methods or in-depth analyses.
Relevant datasets must be deposited in an appropriate public repository prior to Data Descriptor
submission, and their completeness will be considered during editorial evaluation and peer review.
The data must be made publicly available without restriction in the event that the Data Descriptor
is accepted for publication (excepting reasonable controls related to human privacy issues or
public safety).

Title
110 characters maximum, including spaces

Titles should avoid the use of acronyms and abbreviations where possible. Colons and
parentheses are not permitted.

Authors
Firstname Lastname1, Firstname Lastname2

Affiliations
1. institution
2. institution
corresponding author(s): Firstname Lastname (email@address)

Abstract
170 words maximum
The Abstract should succinctly describe the study, the assay(s) performed, the resulting data,
and their reuse potential, but should not make any claims regarding new scientific findings.
No references are allowed in this section.

Background & Summary

700 words maximum
The Background & Summary should provide an overview of the study design, the assay(s)
performed, and the data generated, including any background information needed to put
this study in the context of previous work and the literature, and should reference literature
as needed. The section should also briefly outline the broader goals that motivated collection
of the data, as well as their potential reuse value. We also encourage authors to include a
figure that provides a schematic overview of the study and assay(s) design.

Methods
The Methods should include detailed text describing any steps or procedures used in
producing the data, including full descriptions of the experimental design, data acquisition
assays, and any computational processing (e.g. normalization, image feature extraction). See
the detailed section in our submission guidelines for advice on writing a transparent and
reproducible methods section. Related methods should be grouped under corresponding
subheadings where possible, and methods should be described in enough detail to allow

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other researchers to interpret and repeat, if required, the full study. Specific data outputs
should be explicitly referenced via data citation (see Data Records and Citing Data, below).

Authors should cite previous descriptions of the methods under use, but ideally the method
descriptions should be complete enough for others to understand and reproduce the
methods and processing steps without referring to associated publications. There is no limit
to the length of the Methods section.

Data Records
The Data Records section should be used to explain each data record associated with this
work, including the repository where this information is stored, and to provide an overview
of the data files and their formats. Each external data record should be cited as described
below. A data citation should also be placed in the subsection of the Methods containing the
data-collection or analytical procedure(s) used to derive the corresponding record.

Tables should be used to support the data records, and should clearly indicate the samples
and subjects (study inputs), their provenance, and the experimental manipulations
performed on each. They should also specify the data output resulting from each data-
collection or analytical step, should these form part of the archived record.

Technical Validation
The Technical Validation section should present any experiments or analyses that are needed
to support the technical quality of the dataset. This section may be supported by figures and
tables, as needed. This is a required section; authors must provide information to justify the
reliability of their data.
Possible content may include:
- experiments that support or validate the data-collection procedure(s) (e.g. negative
controls, or an analysis of standards to confirm measurement linearity)
- statistical analyses of experimental error and variation
- phenotypic or genotypic assessments of biological samples (e.g. confirming disease
status, cell line identity, or the success of perturbations)
- general discussions of any procedures used to ensure reliable and unbiased data
production, such as blinding and randomization, sample tracking systems, etc.
- any other information needed for assessment of technical rigour by the referees
Generally, this should not include:
- follow-up experiments aimed at testing or supporting an interpretation of the data
- statistical hypothesis testing (e.g. tests of statistical significance, identifying
differentially expressed genes, trend analysis, etc.)
- exploratory computational analyses like clustering and annotation enrichment (e.g.
GO analysis).

Usage Notes
This section is optional
The Usage Notes should contain brief instructions to assist other researchers with reuse of
the data. This may include discussion of software packages that are suitable for analysing the
assay data files, suggested downstream processing steps (e.g. normalization, etc.), or tips for
integrating or comparing the data records with other datasets. Authors are encouraged to
provide code, programs or data-processing workflows if they may help others understand or

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use the data. Please see our code availability policy for advice on supplying custom code
alongside Data Descriptor manuscripts.
For studies involving privacy or safety controls on public access to the data, this section
should describe in detail these controls, including how authors can apply to access the data,
what criteria will be used to determine who may access the data, and any limitations on data
use.

Code Availability
For all studies using custom code in the generation or processing of datasets, a statement
must be included under the subheading "Code availability", indicating whether and how the
code can be accessed, including any restrictions to access. This section should also include
information on the versions of any software used, if relevant, and any specific variables or
parameters used to generate, test, or process the current dataset.

Acknowledgements
The Acknowledgements should contain text acknowledging non-author contributors.
Acknowledgements should be brief, and should not include thanks to anonymous referees
and editors or effusive comments. Grant or contribution numbers may be acknowledged.

Author contributions
Each author’s contribution to the work should be described briefly, on a separate line, in the
Author Contributions section.

Competing interests
A competing interests statement is required for all papers accepted by and published in
Scientific Data. If there is no conflict of interest, a statement declaring this must still be
included in the manuscript.

Figures
Figure images should be provided as separate files and should be referred to using a
consistent numbering scheme through the entire Data Descriptor. In most cases, a Data
Descriptor should not contain more than three figures, but more may be allowed when
needed. We discourage the inclusion of figures in the Supplementary Information – all key
figures should be included here in the main Figure section.

For initial submissions, authors may choose to supply a single PDF with embedded figures.

Authors are encouraged to consider creating a figure that outlines the experimental
workflow(s) used to generate and analyse the data output(s).

Figure Legends
Figure legends begin with a brief title sentence summarizing the purpose of the figure as a
whole, and continue with a short description of what is shown in each panel and an
explanation of any symbols used. Legends must total no more than 350 words, and may
contain literature references. The first sentence of the legend will be used as the title for the
figure. It should contain no references of any kind, including to specific figure panels,
bibliographic citations or references to other figures or panels.

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Tables
Authors are encouraged to provide one or more tables that provide basic information on the
main ‘inputs’ to the study (e.g. samples, participants, or information sources) and the main
data outputs of the study; also see the additional information on providing metadata on
page 6. Tables in the manuscript should generally not be used to present primary data (i.e.
measurements). Tables containing primary data should be submitted to an appropriate data
repository.

Authors may provide tables within the Word document or as separate files (tab-delimited
text or Excel files). Legends, where needed, should be included in the Word document.
Generally, a Data Descriptor should have fewer than ten tables, but more may be allowed
when needed. Tables may be of any size, but only tables that fit onto a single printed page
will be included in the PDF version of the article (up to a maximum of three).

Due to typesetting constraints, tables that do not fit onto a single A4 page cannot be
included in the PDF version of the article and will be made available in the online version
only. Any such tables must be labelled in the text as ‘Online-only’ tables and numbered
separately from the main table list e.g. ‘Table 1, Table 2, Online-only Table 1’ etc.

References
Bibliographic information for any works cited in the above sections, using the standard
Nature referencing style.

In line with emerging industry-wide standards for data citation , references to all datasets
described or used in the manuscript should be cited in the text with a superscript number
and listed in the ‘References’ section in the same manner as a conventional literature
reference. See ‘Citing Data’ below for further details.

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Additional Formatting Information
Referencing Figures, Tables, and other content
The Word document may reference Figures (e.g. Fig. 1), Tables (e.g. Table 1), online-only
tables (e.g. Online-only Table 1) and Supplementary Information (e.g. Supplementary Table
1, or Supplementary File 2, etc.). When information from metadata documents must be
referred to, it should also be included in the main manuscript as Tables, and formatted in a
way that suits human readability. To refer to the ISA-Tab metadata records within the
manuscript, use the phrase “see associated Metadata Record”.

Citation format
All references should be numbered sequentially, first throughout the text, then in tables,
followed by figures and, finally, boxes; that is, references that only appear in tables, figures
or boxes should be last in the reference list. Only one publication is given for each number.
Only papers that have been published or accepted by a named publication or recognized
preprint server should be in the numbered list; preprints of accepted papers in the reference
list should be submitted with the manuscript. Published conference abstracts, numbered
patents, and archived code with an assigned DOI may be included in the reference list. Grant
details and acknowledgments are not permitted as numbered references. Footnotes are not
used.
Scientific Data uses standard Nature referencing style. All authors should be included in
reference lists unless there are six or more, in which case only the first author should be
given, followed by ‘et al.’. Authors should be listed last name first, followed by a comma and
initials (followed by full stops, '.') of given names. Article titles should be in Roman text; only
the first word of the title should have an initial capital and the title should be written exactly
as it appears in the work cited, ending with a full stop. Book titles should be given in italics
and all words in the title should have initial capitals. Journal names are italicized and
abbreviated (with full stops) according to common usage. Volume numbers and the
subsequent comma appear in bold. The full page range should be given where appropriate.
See the examples below:

Journal Article:
1. Schott, D. H., Collins, R. N. & Bretscher, A. Secretory vesicle transport velocity in
living cells depends on the myosin V lever arm length. J. Cell Biol. 156, 35‐39 (2002).

Book ‐ Book titles should be given in italics and all words in the title should have initial
capitals:
2. Hogan, B. Manipulating The Mouse Embryo: A Laboratory Manual 2nd edn (Cold
Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1994)

Publicly available preprint:

3. Babichev, S. A., Ries, J. & Lvovsky, A. I. Quantum scissors: teleportation of single-
mode optical states by means of nonlocal single photon. Preprint at
http://arXiv.org/quant-ph/0208066 (2002).

Code:
4. Gallotti, R. & Barthélemy, M. Source code for: The multilayer temporal network of
public transport in Great Britain. Figshare
https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1249862.v1 (2014).

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Online material ‐ Stable documents hosted on the web may be cited in the main reference
list, using the format below. Websites or dynamic web resources should be cited by
embedding the URL in the main article text:
5. Manaster, J. Sloth squeak. Scientific American Blog Network
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psi-vid/2014/04/09/sloth-squeak (2014).

Technical or government report:

6. Akutsu, T. Total Heart Replacement Device. Report No. NIH-NHLI-69 2185-4 (National
Institutes of Health, 1974).

Citing Data
In line with emerging industry-wide standards for data citation , references to all datasets
described or used in the manuscript should be cited in the text with a superscript number
and listed in the ‘References’ section in the same manner as a conventional literature
reference.

An author list (formatted as above) and title for the dataset should be included in the data
citation, and should reflect the author(s) and dataset title recorded at the repository. If
author or title is not recorded by the repository, these should not be included in the data
citation. The name of the data-hosting repository, URL to the dataset and year the data
were made available are required for all data citations. For DOI-based (e.g. figshare or
Dryad) repositories the DOI URL should be used. For repositories using accessions (e.g.
SRA or GEO) an identifiers.org  URL should be used where available. For first submissions,
authors may choose to include just the accession number. Scientific Data staff will provide
further guidance after peer-review. Please refer to the following examples of data citation
for guidance:

1. Zhang, Q-L., Chen, J-Y., Lin, L-B., Wang, F., Guo, J., Deng, X-Y. Characterization of
ladybird Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata transcriptomes across various life
stages. figshare https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4064768.v3  (2018).
2. NCBI Sequence Read
Archive http://identifiers.org/ncbi/insdc.sra:SRP121625  (2017).
3. Barbosa, P., Usie, A. and Ramos, A. M. Quercus suber isolate HL8, whole genome
shotgun sequencing
project. GenBankhttp://identifiers.org/ncbi/insdc:PKMF00000000  (2018).
4. DNA Data Bank of Japan http://trace.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/DRASearch/submission?
acc=DRA004814  (2016).

Depositing your data to an appropriate repository

Your Scientific Data manuscript will not be sent to review unless the dataset(s) described
therein have been deposited in an appropriate public repository (please see our list of
recommended repositories). Should a specific repository not be available for your field or
data-type, or should the repository of your choice not permit confidential peer-review, you
may upload your data to one of our recommended generalist repositories. Integrated
submission systems are available for both figshare and Dryad.