---
author:
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  family: Edmunds
  given: Scott
  url: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6444-1436
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container: GigaBlog
date: '2011-12-23T00:00:00+00:00'
date_updated: '2025-12-06T10:49:10+00:00'
guid: http://finaloriginalblogs.dev/gigablog/2011/12/23/data-citation-december/
identifier: https://doi.org/10.59350/1w8y8-k9e08
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keywords:
- Open Access
- Conferences
- Curation
- Data Citation
- Data Publication
lang: en
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summary: '{decoding="async" style="width: 222px;'
title: Data Citation December
url: https://wayback.archive-it.org/22098/2025-05-01T17:13:42Z/http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/data-citation-december
version: v1
---

[![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/%22Citation_needed%22.jpg/800px-%22Citation_needed%22.jpg){decoding=\"async\"
style=\"width: 222px; height: 167px;\" citation=\"\" needed\"\"=\"\"
align=\"left\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"4\"
vspace=\"4\"}](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A%22Citation_needed%22.jpg "By futureatlas.com (originally posted to Flickr as "){citation=\"\"
needed\")=\"\" \[cc-by-2.0=\"\" (www.creativecommons.org=\"\"
licenses=\"\" by=\"\" 2.0)\],=\"\" via=\"\" wikimedia=\"\"
commons\"=\"\"}Despite the approaching holidays its been another busy
month in the
[*GigaScience*](http://www.gigasciencejournal.com "GigaScience homepage"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} office, with Alexandra attending the InCoB/ISMB-Asia
[meeting](http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/gigablog/2011/12/incob_ismb_asia_keynotes_and "InCoB meeting report"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} in Kuala Lumpur (see her talk slides
[here](http://www.slideshare.net/GigaScience/alexandra-basford-incob-2011-a-journals-perspective-on-data-standards-and-biocuration "A Basford InCoB talk slides"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"}) and the Human Variome Project
[meeting](http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/gigablog/2011/12/hvp_beijing_dealing_with_variation "HVP meeting report"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} in Beijing, and Scott attending a number of meetings and
workshops in the UK, including the [International Digital Curation
Conference](http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc11 "IDCC meeting website"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} (IDCC) in Bristol. The \"Digital\" in the meeting title
was a bit of a giveaway of the level of technological savvy of the
attendees, as it was heavily tweeted (see
[\#idcc](https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23idcc "#idcc twitter"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} and this
[storify](http://storify.com/eventamplifier/idcc-11-what-did-you-say?awesm=sfy.co_RQf&utm_campaign=&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&utm_source=t.co&utm_content=storify-pingback "IDCC storify"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"}), blogged (see
[here](http://citingbytes.blogspot.com/2011/12/idcc-2011-notes-from-day-1-plenary.html?spref=tw "Sarah Callaghan blog"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} for a good example), and
[videos](http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc11/video-gallery "IDCC videos"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} are also available for many of the talks, so we will not
repeat what is already well covered.

With additional
[workshops](http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc11/workshops "IDCC workshops"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} on data impact and reuse, Bristol was the center of the
Data Citation universe in December, with representatives and talks from
many data publishing projects, databases and issuing bodies such as our
[*DataCite*](http://datacite.org/ "DataCite"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} collaborators, so it was an excellent opportunity to
assess where things currently stand. Interesting new infrastructure was
presented by Mark Hahnel, giving a preview of the new design of the
[FigShare](http://figshare.com/ "Figshare"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} platform launching in the new year, which for the first
time will use citable DOIs for their datasets. Brian Hole from [Ubiquity
press](http://www.ubiquitypress.com/ "Ubiquity press"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} presented on \"Publication and Citation\", and mentioned
data publishing platforms coming from them, and the representatives of
other publishers present showed that there are obviously other
commercial projects in the pipeline (for example
[this](http://blog.f1000.com/2011/11/24/ismpp-2011-%E2%80%93-what%E2%80%99s-next-for-f1000/ "F1000 Research blog"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} from F1000).

Being a curation conference, researcher driven approaches were also on
display, and the Environmental Sciences community in particular have
been publishing datasets with DOIs for many years, both from the well
established [Pangaea](http://www.pangaea.de/ "Pangaea"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} database, and by individual data centers (Sarah
Callaghan\'s
[talk](http://www.dcc.ac.uk/webfm_send/647 "Sarah Callaghan ppt"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} representing NERC\'s environmental data centers being a
great example). Phillip Bourne\'s excellent
[talk](http://www.slideshare.net/pebourne/open-data-driving-scholarly-communication-in-2020 "Phillip Bourne"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} imagined the possibilities that mixing open data stores
with well integrated widgets and tools to mashup and produce new
analyses could bring, and he mentioned that the very well established
[PDB](http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/home/home.do "PDB"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} (Protein Database) uses
[DOIs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier "wikipedia on DOIs"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} as accessions, but these are not integrated and cited
into associated publications. This is a bit of a missed opportunity, and
Mark Hahnel (video
[here](http://vimeo.com/33627885 "MH video"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"}) and Heather Piwowar
([slides](http://www.dcc.ac.uk/webfm_send/606 "Heather Piwowar slides"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} and
[video](http://vimeo.com/33628092 "HP Video"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"}) both highlighted the needs for proper attribution and
impact tracking for datasets to incentivise sharing of data. Our recent
examples of DOIs linked to datasets from our
[GigaDB](http://gigadb.org/ "GigaDB"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}
database getting integrated into articles in *Nature Biotechnology* (see
more
[here](http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/gigablog/2011/12/news_from_another_of_our "Macaque genomes in Nature Biotech"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"}), and *Genome Biology* (see
[here](http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2011/12/gigascience_a_repository_for_large "Sorghum DOIs in Genome Biology"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"}) demonstrates that this is feasible to link datasets
with global, resolvable identifiers into articles.

Whilst [Pangaea](http://www.pangaea.de/ "Pangaea"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} and the Environmental Science community have managed to
do this for a number of years (including
[examples](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/307/5716/1741.full "Pahnke et al. Science 2005: 307 (5716)"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} from as far back as 2005), the integration of data DOIs
into the references of the *Genome Biology*
[article](http://genomebiology.com/2011/12/11/R114/abstract "Genome Biology Sorghum genome article"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} was the first time we are aware of that this has been
accomplished in the field of genomics. This example is a great example
of the practicalities of how data can be cited (following the best
practice
[guidelines](http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides/cite-datasets "DCC data citation guidelines"){target="_blank"
rel="noopener"} of the DCC), but until the bibliometric indices properly
track them this is only a first step. With this important next step
likely to finally happening in the new year, this meeting was a good
opportunity for the data DOI producers and publishers to compare notes
and ready themselves for the important year ahead. As December comes to
a close, we at *GigaScience* would like to wish you all seasons
greetings, and we look forward to an exciting 2012 for the field of data
publishing!

The post [Data Citation
December](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/data-citation-december/){rel="nofollow"}
appeared first on
[GigaBlog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog){rel="nofollow"}.