by Katherine Akers*
In one of my recent projects, I’ve been investigating the development and current state of data journals and other scholarly journals that publish data papers. Rather than forming arguments or drawing conclusions from data, data papers call attention to and describe particular research datasets, which may increase the likelihood that the datasets could be re-used or re-purposed by other researchers in the future. What I particularly like about data papers is that they are peer-reviewed, can be listed on CVs, and can accumulate citations just like traditional journal articles, thus providing an incentive for researchers to put time and effort into preparing their datasets for public access.
The Peer Review for Publication & Accreditation of Research Data in the Earth Sciences (PREPARDE) project’s list of data journals was really helpful to me as I started my investigation. However, the more I researched the topic, the more journals I found that publish articles describing datasets, databases, software, or models. To date, I have found 73 journals that either exclusively publish data (or database, software, or model) papers or that publish data papers as one article type. It seems that every time I scour the internet for information on data journals, I find another one, so this list is likely not exhaustive. Also, an increasing number of publishers are launching new data journals or starting to publish data papers, including Nature’s Scientific Data, suggesting that this list will only continue to grow.
- Acta Crystallographica E: Structure Reports Online
- Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables
- Biodiversity Data Journal
- BioRisk
- BMC Bioinformatics
- BMC Biology
- BMC Biophysics
- BMC Biotechnology
- BMC Cancer
- BMC Cell Biology
- BMC Complementary & Alternative Medicine
- BMC Dermatology
- BMC Developmental Biology
- BMC Ecology
- BMC Evolutionary Biology
- BMC Gastroenterology
- BMC Genetics
- BMC Genomics
- BMC Geriatrics
- BMC Immunology
- BMC Infectious Diseases
- BMC Medical Education
- BMC Medical Genetics
- BMC Medical Genomics
- BMC Medical Imaging
- BMC Medical Informatics & Decision Making
- BMC Medical Research Methodology
- BMC Microbiology
- BMC Molecular Biology
- BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders
- BMC Nephrology
- BMC Neuroscience
- BMC Ophthalmology
- BMC Palliative Care
- BMC Pharmacology & Toxicology
- BMC Plant Biology
- BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth
- BMC Psychiatry
- BMC Public Health
- BMC Pulmonary Medicine
- BMC Research Notes
- BMC Structural Biology
- BMC Systems Biology
- BMC Urology
- Dataset Papers in Science
- Earth System Science Data
- Ecological Research
- Ecology
- F1000 Research
- Genomics Data
- Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems
- Geoscience Data Journal
- Geoscientific Model Development
- GigaScience
- International Journal of Robotic Research
- Internet Archaeology
- Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data
- Journal of Open Archaeology Data
- Journal of Open Psychology Data
- Journal of Open Research Software
- Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data
- Journal of Statistical Software
- MycoKeys
- Nature Conservation
- NeoBiota
- Neuroinformatics
- Nuclear Data Sheets
- Open Health Data
- PhytoKeys
- PLoS ONE
- Scientific Data
- Standards in Genomic Sciences
- ZooKeys
* Katherine Akers is now a Biomedical Research Data Specialist at Wayne State University’s Shiffman Medical Library.
Data@MLibrary 
I recently found more journals to add to this list: SpringerPlus, The Journal of Astronomical Data, Open Data Journal for Agricultural Research, and Biomedical Data Journal.