Data publication
To meet the growing demand towards traceability and citability of datasets, VLIZ collaborates with DataCite to provide the scientific community the opportunity to formally publish their datasets by assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs).
If you wish to assign a DOI to your dataset simply fill out the online submitform. Please do consider the requirements listed below and the VLIZ data submit guidelines
Why assign a DOI to my dataset?
In science DOIs have been widely used by publishers of peer reviewed journals for over 10 years to uniquely identify a specific article. Associating DOIs to scientific publications has not only increased the traceability of the cited literature but also simplified the maintenance of citation indexes which serve today to assign academic credit to scientists for their work.
As is true for claims based on information from other publications, in scholarly literature, whenever and wherever a claim relies upon data, the corresponding data should be cited. Moreover there is growing international support for the idea that dataset citations should also lead to academic credit. Assigning DOIs to your dataset can facilitate these processes for the following reasons:
- the DOI system can serve to identify and locate a specific version of a dataset
- datasets to which a DOI is assigned should stay persistently accessible.
- after assigning a DOI to a dataset, the data should no longer be changed. This will assure that claims based on data can always be checked.
- minimum metadata - including the names of the data author(s) – needs be associated with the DOI during registration. Having the data authors associated with the DOI will assure that they can receive the appropriate credit and recognition for their work
- DataCite will store the associated metadata and disseminate it to other initiatives like the Data Citation Index (Thomson Reuters) and ORCID. The Date Citation Index will link the indexed datasets to publications citing them. ORCID allows researches to claim authership of their datasets, which will help resolve confusion caused by researches with a similar name.
- by assigning a DOI with the dataset, the data publisher attests that the dataset answers to certain quality standards and contains all the necessary metadata to make the dataset usable by other scientists. This will encourage other scientists to use it for their analyses and then cite your dataset in their publications.
Requirements for data publications
There are some requirements for the data to be published as a data publication using the VLIZ systems.
- A dataset formally published with a DOI will be stored by VLIZ and will remain publically available indefinitely.
The availability of dataset may remain restricted for a pre-defined period. For example if the DOI is requested for the submission of a paper in a peer reviewed journal, the dataset can remain restricted until publication of this paper. - The data provider has the option to submit corrected or updated versions and have a new DOI assigned to them. A new version will however not replace any earlier version to which a DOI has been assigned.
After submitting the dataset, VLIZ will create an IMIS discovery record for the dataset using the information provided in the submit form. The data provider will be requested to review and approve this record. The data provider will also be asked to provide any missing mandatory metadata.
Before publishing, VLIZ will check whether the dataset meets basic quality standards and contains all the necessary metadata, as listed in the guidelines document, to make the dataset re-usable by other scientists.
For more information please contact data@vliz.be.