Would you like to make your research data accessible online? Do you want your data to be archived and secured in the long term and have it remain visible and citable?
Here is a brief introduction to the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system, how it works, and how to use it for the citation of datasets.
The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier used to cite and link electronic resources (texts, research data, or other content). It works for the digital identification of physical, digital or other objects and is used mainly for online articles of scholarly/acedemic journals. The central database in which the identifiers are stored is operated by the International DOI Foundation.
A DOI name consists of a prefix and a suffix, separated by a slash. DOI names always start with 10. and have the form 10.organization/ID. Publishers (or other organizations) each have their own number (starting at 1000).
Crossref is an accredited service by the International DOI Foundation for the registration of DOI names and is operated by Publishers International Linking Association (PILA), Inc. This cooperation between scholarly publishers was founded in early 2000 to enable persistent cross-publisher citation linking in online academic journals.
DOI names for the registration of research data
The registration of DOI names for research data is provided by the DataCite registration agency, accredited by the International DOI Foundation. DataCite is an international consortium established in London in 2009 to promote research data as independent, citable objects.
The Leibniz Institutes GESIS and ZBW have been members of DataCite since 2010 and together offer da|ra, a DOI registration service for social and economic data. The prefix assignment is done by da|ra via DataCite from the International DOI Foundation (IDF).
GESIS offers information on the process of archiving research data, including
- Preparing Data for Submission,
- Legal aspects,
- Ingest,
- Processing and Documentation,
- Data Backup,
- Data Access and
- Long Term Preservation.
All data are preserved for the long-term and documented to international standards.
datorium is a data repository service for the social science and economic science research community. It provides a user-friendly tool for the documentation, upload and publication of research data. The use of a persistent identifier (DOI) clearly identifies the datasets used in a publication.
