ESDS International announces launch of integrated data citation tool

[Susan Noble]

Dear Datacite-users,

Following the user group meeting at the British Library in April when I spoke of our intention to implement dois for international datasets at ESDS International, I’m pleased to announce that today we launched a data citation tool for users of ESDS International data – see below for newsflash.

I hope this is of some interest to you and please contact me if you have any questions or comments.

Best wishes,

Susan

Susan Noble
ESDS International
Mimas, The University of Manchester

Tel: +44 (0) 161 2750629
Email: susan...@manchester.ac.uk
Part-time: Tues-Thurs
URL: http://www.esds.ac.uk/international

21 September 2011: Launch of integrated data citation tool

ESDS International is pleased to announce the launch of a new data citation tool which has been fully integrated into the data delivery software, Beyond 20/20. This coincides with a performance enhancing upgrade from version 8.0 to 8.2 of the Beyond 20/20 application.

Why cite international data?

Citing international data in the scholarly record is essential for several reasons; i) it enables easy reuse and verification of data, ii) citation allows the level of usage and therefore impact of data to be tracked and iii) it creates a scholarly record that recognises and rewards data producers. Toby Green, Head of Publishing at the OECD is a key proponent of data citation and author of the OECD white paper We Need Publishing Standards for Datasets and Data Tables. He has said of ESDS International's implementation of a data citation system;

"Datasets are a significant part of the scholarly record and need to be recognized and cited alongside articles and books so readers can verify and reproduce results easily and quickly. So, I welcome ESDS International's initiative to provide data citations and I encourage authors to cite data just as they cite journal articles and book chapters and thus help bring datasets into the mainstream scholarly ecosystem.”

How to cite international data

In order to make it easier for our users to cite data, each time data is now downloaded from Beyond 20/20, bibliographic citation information will be included in the download file. For example, if a user chooses to download a selection of data from the September 2011 edition of the IMF Direction of Trade Statistics, the following text will appear at the top of the download file:

• International Monetary Fund (2011): Direction of Trade Statistics (Edition: September 2011). ESDS International, University of Manchester. DOI: 10.5257/imf/dots/2011-09.

This information can then be copied and pasted into the References section of any research paper in which the academic/student has used this data - see the Guide to citing international data for step-by-step instructions.

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) included in the citation is a string of numbers and letters which provide a means of persistently identifying an object on a digital network - thus allowing subsequent researchers to find the identical data used in that research. They would simply need to input '10.5257/imf/dots/2011-09' into a DOI resolver (e.g. http://dx.doi.org/) and would then be taken to a web page providing information about the IMF DOTS at ESDS International and how to access it.

ESDS International has been working with DataCite UK, the pilot service run by the British Library to obtain Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for datasets hosted by ESDS International. DOIs are emerging as the international standard for identifying objects (or information about them) in the digital environment. DataCite is an international consortium to: i) establish easier access to scientific research data on the Internet, ii) increase acceptance of research data as legitimate, citable contributions to the scientific record and iii) to support data archiving that will permit results to be verified and re-purposed for future study.

What's new with Beyond 20/20 WDS?

As well as the integrated data citation tool, version 8.2 of the software includes:

• enhancements to searching - users now have the option to search from within their current folder,
• printable versions of tables,
• improved performance.

For further information on the data delivery software, please see systems requirements and our software guides.

Please get in touch if you have any comments on the new data citation system or need any help in citing international data!

Best wishes,

ESDS International Team

Mimas, The University of Manchester
URL: www.esds.ac.uk/International