Baker talks about the American Genetic Association (AGA) and Journal of Heredity's efforts to improve data archiving. The AGA recognizes that the primary data underlying the conclusions of an article are critical to the verifiability and transparency of the scientific enterprise. With the advent of electronic archiving, these data can now be preserved in usable form for decades into the future. For this reason, Journal of Heredity has previously endorsed the principles of the Joint Data Archiving Policy by encouraging all authors to archive primary data in an appropriate public archive, on a voluntary basis. By agreement of the AGA Council, they are updating the journal's instructions to Authors to conform with the expectation of mandatory data archiving adopted by other leading journals in evolution and genetics. As of Jan 1, 2013, the primary data underlying the analyses and conclusions of a manuscript must be submitted to a public archive as a condition of publication in Journal of Heredity.