diff --git a/packages/-ember-data/.npmignore b/packages/-ember-data/.npmignore
index fdeced3439a..1559b4350bb 100644
--- a/packages/-ember-data/.npmignore
+++ b/packages/-ember-data/.npmignore
@@ -34,6 +34,9 @@
 /bin
 /docs
 /node-tests
-!/dist/docs # ignore all assets except /dist/docs folder
 .appveyor.yml
 lib/scripts
+
+# whitelist yuidoc's data.json for api docs generation
+!/dist/docs/data.json
+