A requirement of data archives is that data holdings can be easily discovered, accessed, and used. One approach to improving data discovery and access is through data citations coupled with Digital Object Identifiers (DOI).
Since 1998, The Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC) has issued data citations that have been accepted and used in peer-reviewed journals. Citation elements established by the ORNL DAAC are similar to those used for journal articles (authors, year, product title, and information to locate), and beginning in 2007 included a DOI that is persistent, actionable, specific, and complete. The approach used at the ORNL DAAC also allows for referring to subsets of the data, by including within the citation the temporal and spatial extent, and parameters used. Data citations allow readers to find data and reproduce the results of the research article, and also use those data to test new hypotheses, design new sample collections, or construct or evaluate models.
A new paper from ORNL DAAC staff presents a case study describing practice and implementation of data product citations at a data archive.
Published in Ecological Informatics, the paper can be downloaded at no cost until May 5, 2016. The permanent link for this article is Implementation of data citations and persistent identifiers at the ORNL DAAC.
