Mendeley and labfolder join forces to improve data linking and exchange

Today, the linking of scientific literature and experimental raw data is made possible by the integration of the reference manager and academic social network Mendeley into the digital lab notebook labfolder . The linking of these two free tools now allows the citation and embedding of scientific literature into experimental raw data, and the exporting and sharing of experiment descriptions in Mendeley.

Data discontinuity in scientific communication is one of the big problems in science: Because in scientific publications, details about experiments are very often heavily edited and compressed, reproducibility and the reutilization of scientific findings becomes a challenge. "Linking scientific publications to raw data is an important step in making science more reproducible" says Victor Henning, Co-founder and CEO of Mendeley. "The Mendeley integration allows scientist to use scientific literature right where they need it, " adds Simon Bungers, Co-founder and CEO of labfolder. "The possibility to share experimental details on Mendeley - either with collaborators or publicly - further helps scientists to exchange technical knowledge and get additional citations for their work".

Collaborative research is on the rise, and new tools and platforms are helping scientists to communicate scientific data and knowledge more effectively. With the widespread availability of growing amounts of data, the challenge remains to find the right information which helps researchers solve problems at the right time. "Mendeley offers a recommendation engine based on the similarities between scientific papers that people read" says Florian Hauer, Co-founder and COO of labfolder . "By identifying clusters of potentially interesting content, Mendeley can help users to find the right source of experimental data that labfolder users shared on Mendeley, and also to find the right audience for their own content".

Scientific data sharing is becoming more popular: The US National Science Foundation encourages the sharing of scientific datasets by rating data citations in the same way as other publications such as journals, and other international funding agencies are likely to follow suit. The intrinsic interest of scientists in sharing this data is also on the rise: recent studies show that many scientists now embrace data sharing - and this helps their work to get more recognition.

Source: labfolder GmbH