Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive, SN: 6411, (Taken from ) DOIs and how they work Centre for Longitudinal Studies (2008) Millennium Cohort Study: Fourth Survey. Prior to that, a typical data citation (if the data was cited at all) might have looked something like:Īs you will see, this article is only from 2009, and the link is already broken. DataCite has been making it possible to cite data with DOIs since 2009. This potential for broken links dissuades authors from citing data, and lack of citation discourages researchers from sharing their data at all.ĭOIs have been used to support citations to online journal articles for nearly 20 years. If the data behind a research paper cannot be found, it becomes difficult to reproduce and verify that work. They provide an internationally-recognised standard for data citation, making data and other research outputs findable, accessible, interoperable and re-useable, while ensuring citation, credit and research impact.ĭOIs are a crucial part of DataCite, which was founded to encourage data citation, and in itself, not only supports the reproducibility of research, but also promotes data sharing.Īs online resources, research data are particularly vulnerable to broken links. The Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) that DataCite provides are a technical solution to the broken links that can occur when authors cite resources on the web.
