Data citation and DOIs are fundamental to successful metrics and connecting data and other research outputs.

1. Data Citation and DOIs
George Alter
University of Michigan

3. Why is data citation important?
• Creators of data have a right to expect their work
to be acknowledged
• Citation will enhance the careers of data
producers
• Recognition encourages others to share data
• Citations are an element in evaluating the impact
of a data collection

4. NSF Biosketch
f. Biographical Sketch(es)
(c) Products
A list of: (i) up to five products most closely related to the
proposed project; and (ii) up to five other significant
products, whether or not related to the proposed project.
Acceptable products must be citable and accessible
including but not limited to publications, data sets,
software, patents, and copyrights…
Each product must include full citation information
including (where applicable and practicable) names of all
authors, date of publication or release, title, title of
enclosing work such as journal or book, volume, issue,
pages, website and Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or
other Persistent Identifier.

5. • Academic
rewards are
often tied to
citations.
• It is easy to
count
citations of
publications.
• Data re-use is
very difficult
to count.

6. The Problem:
Inconsistent Placement of References
Data-PASS letter to the American Sociological Association,
August 8, 2010
Similar letters sent to American Economics Association, American Education Research
Association, and American Political Science Association.

7. Persistent Identifiers
• A long-lasting reference to a digital object
• URLs point to locations, which are unstable
• Persistent Identifiers provide a name and a
locator
• Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are widely
used for publications
• DOIs are resolved by Registration Agencies

8. DOIs are used to
resolve rights and
subscriptions

9. DataCite
• DOI Registration Agency created for scientific data
– Maintains the resolution infrastructure
– Maintains a searchable database of metadata
– Manages the identifiers over the long term
– Establishes and shares best practice
• Focused on improving the scholarly infrastructure around
datasets and other non-textual information
• Founded December 1st 2009 in London

10. When DOIs are used in citations, the citing
articles can be recovered by search engines.
This data set has
been used in 330
publications, but
only 15 used the
DOI.

11. It is easy to get a citation and a
DOI from a data repository.
DOI

12. Where are we now?
• Links between data and publications are not
available, because journals do not cite data
consistently.
• Without consistent citation, aggregators
(Thomson Reuters, Scopus, Google Scholar)
cannot automate links
• The impact of data creation (and data
creators) is difficult to measure

13. Data citation standards, including DOIs,
are an easy policy for journals to adopt.