title: The Resource Identification Initiative: A Cultural Shift in Publishing.
abstract: A central tenet in support of research reproducibility is the ability to uniquely identify research resources, i.e., reagents, tools, and materials that are used to perform experiments. However, current reporting practices for research resources are insufficient to identify the exact resources that are reported or to answer basic questions such as "How did other studies use resource X?" To address this issue, the Resource Identification Initiative was launched as a pilot project to improve the reporting standards for research resources in the methods sections of papers and thereby improve identifiability and scientific reproducibility. The pilot engaged over 25 biomedical journal editors from most major publishers, as well as scientists and funding officials. Authors were asked to include Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs) in their manuscripts prior to publication for three resource types: antibodies, model organisms, and tools (i.e., software and databases). RRIDs are assigned by an authoritative database, for example a model organism database, for each type of resource. To make it easier for authors to obtain RRIDs, resources were aggregated from the appropriate databases and their RRIDs made available in a central web portal ( http://scicrunch.org/resources ). RRIDs meet three key criteria: they are machine readable, free to generate and access, and are consistent across publishers and journals. The pilot was launched in February of 2014 and over 300 papers have appeared that report RRIDs. The number of journals participating has expanded from the original 25 to more than 40 with RRIDs appearing in 62 different journals to date. Here, we present an overview of the pilot project and its outcomes to date. We show that authors are able to identify resources and are supportive of the goals of the project. Identifiability of the resources post-pilot showed a dramatic improvement for all three resource types, suggesting that the project has had a significant impact on identifiability of research resources.
authors.affiliation: Center for Research in Biological Systems, UCSD, 9500 Gillman Dr.#0446, la Jolla, CA, 92093-0446, USA. abandrowski@ncmir.ucsd.edu.
authors.forename: Anita
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5497-0243
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bandrowski
authors.affiliation: OHSU Library, Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, 9500 Gillman Dr.#0446, la Jolla, CA, 92093-0446, USA.
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brush
authors.affiliation: Center for Research in Biological Systems, UCSD, 9500 Gillman Dr.#0446, la Jolla, CA, 92093-0446, USA.
authors.forename: Jeffery S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Grethe
authors.affiliation: OHSU Library, Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, 9500 Gillman Dr.#0446, la Jolla, CA, 92093-0446, USA.
authors.forename: Melissa A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Haendel
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 365 Plantation Street, Biotech One, Worcester, MA, 01605, USA.
authors.forename: David N
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Kennedy
authors.affiliation: Karolinska Institutet, Nobels väg 15A, 171 77, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Sean
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hill
authors.affiliation: Fishberg Department of Neuroscience and Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, 10029, USA.
authors.forename: Patrick R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Hof
authors.affiliation: Center for Research in Biological Systems, UCSD, 9500 Gillman Dr.#0446, la Jolla, CA, 92093-0446, USA.
authors.forename: Maryann E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Martone
authors.affiliation: Scientific Outreach Executive, Faculty of 1000 Ltd, Middlesex House 34-42 Cleveland Street, London, W1T 4LB, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Maaike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pols
authors.affiliation: John Wiley and Sons, 11 River St, Hoboken, NJ, 07030, USA.
authors.forename: Serena S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Rd, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Washington
authors.affiliation: , Radarweg 29, 1043 NX, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Zudilova-Seinstra
authors.affiliation: OHSU Library, Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, 9500 Gillman Dr.#0446, la Jolla, CA, 92093-0446, USA.
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Vasilevsky
mesh_terms: D003469:Culture; D066264:Datasets as Topic; D006295:Health Resources / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D009488:Neurosciences; D010865:Pilot Projects; D039781:PubMed / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011643:Publishing / Q000592:standards
keywords: Informatics; RRID:nif-0000-25673; RRID:nlx_153866; Reproducibility