This presentation was provided by David Parsons of Digital Science, during the fifth session of the Spring 2023 NISO Training Series "Quality Assurance of Data Sets." The class focused on Discoverability, and was held May 25, 2023.

1. Data Discoverability
Making your data work for you.
David Parsons, MS
Leslie McIntosh, PhD

2. About Me
I am an editor, a publisher, a marketer, and a data scientist.
A brief bio
My career started in journals and monographs publishing in 2007 for Springer
(before Nature), moved to various editorial roles in medical best-practice
periodicals, undergraduate science/math textbook adaptations in GCC, ed tech
platforms, and finally back to journals as the Publisher of Data in Brief, a peer-
reviewed data journal.
I pursued a Masters in Applied Data Science at SU, moved into a researcher
engagement track and now head B2B Marketing for Digital Science. In short, a
little of everything. I also have a dog and live in New York City.
My opinions are my own and do not necessarily represent Digital Science.

3. Today’s Agenda: Data Discoverability
We will cover both the sticks and the carrots of data publishing.
⚬ Why is data publishing encouraged and why is it important?
⚬ Considerations against data publishing
⚬ Where to store your data
⚬ The good part: the carrot

4. To the researcher themself:
Why is data publishing important?
1. Trustworthiness
2. Reputation
3. Future collaboration or career opportunities
To research and discovery:
1. Funder mandates
2. Institutional/governmental mandates
3. Trust in reproducibility
4. Speed of research progress
5. Publisher requirements

5. Potential reasons not to publish
As data sharing mandates grow, so does a chorus of resistance
1. Clinical research - patient data
2. Prohibitive costs
a. Acquisition
b. Management
3. Team disagreement
4. Time and energy spent organizing
5. File size and types
6. Perceived data quality
“There has been a breach of patient-doctor confidentiality.”

6. Finding the right repository
The most important factor in finding the right repository for
researchers should be permanence and traffic.
1. First and foremost: where do your peers
publish? General vs. field-specific
2. Key indicators (which vary by field):
a. DOI assignment/permanent linking
b. Storage limits
c. Public availability
d. Storage limits
e. File types accepted
f. Versioning
g. Visualizing tools
h. Institutional/funder mandates
i. Is it peer-reviewed?

7. 14
It’s just an attachment.
Supplementary files aren’t necessarily
peer reviewed, generally cannot be found
by search, and don’t naturally generate
traffic to your research paper.
Old conventions pushed authors to add data to their papers’
supplementary files section. How useful is that?
Tradition vs. Now

8. 14
How can a researcher leverage their extra work for increased
downloads and citations?
🥕 Incentives for Data Publishing 🥕
A growing field: peer-reviewed data journals such as Scientific Data
⚬ Opportunity to publish your research data in a second
article
⚬ Simple templated format, easy to submit, fully Open Access
⚬ Excellent way to drive more traffic to your original research
article and to your data itself
⚬ Others include Data in Brief (Elsevier) and Data (MDPI)

9. 14
Open data = 25% average increase in citations*
How can a researcher leverage their extra work for increased
downloads and citations?
🥕 Incentives for Data Publishing 🥕
*https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0230416
⚬ Be your own best advocate! - Get your work out there. Share on
social media, responsibly.
⚬ Publications office - another great resource for recently-published
authors.
⚬ The publisher or repository itself - publishers are in constant
need of material to promote in marketing campaigns.

10. Activity Time!
Have fun

11. Follow up? D.Parsons@digital-science.com
Thank you!