The need and drive for open data in biomedical publishing

The concept of open data goes beyond making data freely available. Data must also be free to reuse and build upon without legal or technical impediments. Funder and journal policies for data sharing and the growing open science movement are helping open data to spread across biomedical sub-disciplines. Editors should embrace open data to ensure that their decisions can stand up to close scrutiny; journals need open data to help them fulfil their stated goals, and publishers should utilize open data and data publication to serve the growing sector of the scientific community requiring it as a service, and to continue developing novel forms of scholarly communication in an increasingly data-intensive scholarly communication environment.