Scientific Data is an open access journal dedicated to data, publishing descriptions of research datasets and articles on research data sharing from all areas of natural sciences, medicine, engineering and social sciences.

We believe that:

1. Open research data sharing is crucial for facilitating scientific advancement.
2. Articles describing how to source and use data can greatly facilitate data discovery and reuse, underpinning the aims of the FAIR principles, across any subject discipline.
3. If data are scientifically valid and of potential interest to someone it should be described and made available to the research community. Manuscripts must make an original contribution but they are not assessed based on their perceived significance, importance or impact. This is especially true for Data Descriptors (see below), which do not present hypotheses or conclusions.