DataCite

Advice about persistent identifiers for datasets (DOIs), data citation, and metadata schemas.

DataCite is a not-for-profit organisation which aims to:

• help make data more accessible and more useful
• increase acceptance of research data as legitimate, citable contributions to the scholarly record
• support data archiving that will permit results to be verified and re-purposed for future study

Their purpose is to develop and support methods to locate, identify and cite data and other research objects – specifically, they develop and support the standards behind persistent identifiers for data.

Organisations which are members of DataCite can assign persistent identifiers (most notably DOIs, or digital object identifiers) to datasets. The University of Oxford has an agreement with the British Library (a DataCite member) which allows the Bodleian Libraries to issue DOIs for Oxford-created datasets – contact us for further information.