Joint Statement from DataCite and the International Association of STM Publishers on the Linkability and Citability of Research Data
DataCite and the International Association of STM Publishers are pleased to announce best practice recommendations the two organizations are endorsing to make research data easier to find, link to, re-use and cite.
Introduction
Recent years have shown an exponential growth in the volume of available research data. Most stakeholders across the spectrum of researchers, funders, librarians and publishers agree about the benefits of having researcher validated research data available and findable for reuse by others. Still, the current estimates about research data are that approximately 70 pct are never shared and remain on personal computers or hard disks of the researchers or at best their department at the institute.
Researchers wish to have safe and trustworthy repositories for the preservation of their underlying research data. For findability, citability and re-use, it is of ultimate importance that researcher validated data are well linked with publications to ensure their inclusion in the record of science. It is in this context that DataCite, a consortium of 16 library and archival institutes, and the International Association of STM Publishers, whose membership of over 100 publishers internationally publish around 70 % of all research publications worldwide, are issuing the following joint statement. The aim of this joint statement is to achieve commonly shared principles for best practices between publishers, researchers and data repositories about the linking between data and publications and citation practices for data sets.
Joint Statement on Linkability and Citability of Research Data:
1. To improve the availability and findability of research data, DataCite and STM encourage authors of research papers to deposit researcher validated data in trustworthy and reliable Data Archives.
2. DataCite and STM encourage Data Archives to enable bi-directional linking between datasets and publications by using established and community endorsed unique persistent identifiers such as database accession codes and DOI's.
3. DataCite and STM encourage publishers to make visible or increase visibility of these links from publications to datasets.
4. DataCite and STM encourage Data Archives to make visible or increase visibility of these links from datasets to publications.
5. DataCite and STM support the principle of data reuse and for this purpose actively participate in initiatives for best practice recommendations for the citation of datasets.
6. DataCite and STM invite other organizations involved in research data management to join and support this statement.
Signed on the 14th June 2012, Copenhagen by Adam Farquhar, President DataCite and Michael Mabe, CEO STM
DataCite (www.datacite.org) is an international organisation which aims to establish easier access to research data, increase acceptance of research data as legitimate contributions in the scholarly record, and to support data archiving to permit results to be verified and re-purposed for future study. DataCite has a Managing Agent (currently the German National Library of Science and Technology, TIB) along with
15 regional members from 11 countries. The organisation was founded in London on 1 Dec 2009, the members are: The German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB), the German National Library of Medicine (ZB MED), the German National Library of Economics (ZBW) and the German GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences.
Additional European members are: The Library of the ETH Zürich in Switzerland, the Library of TU Delft, from the Netherlands, the L'Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST) from France, The technical Information Center of Denmark, The British Library, the Sedish National Data Service (SND), the Conferenza dei Rettori delle Università Italiane (CRUI) from Italy. North America is represented through: the California Digital Library, the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), the Purdue Univerversity and the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI). Furthermore the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) is a member.
STM (www.stm-assoc.org) is the leading global trade association for academic and professional publishers. It has over 110 members in 21 countries who each year collectively publish nearly 70 % of all journal articles and tens of thousands of monographs and reference works. STM members include learned societies, university presses, private companies, new starts and established players.
STM participates in the development of information identification protocols and electronic copyright management systems. STM members are kept fully up to date (via newsletters, the STM website, and e-mail) about the issues which will ultimately affect their business. STM organises seminars, training courses, and conferences. Its General Assembly is held annually, one day preceding the Frankfurt Book Fair.
More information:
Jan Brase, DataCite, Jan.Brase@tib.uni-hannover.de Eefke Smit, STM, smit@stm-assoc.org
