The UK Data Service already supports a Plan S compliant data infrastructure, part of a European network where rich and detailed metadata can be harvested for data sharing through the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) – but the data we make available are not so regularly cited. Why is that? After all, they form a key part of the research process. Our campaign, CiteTheData, aims to improve the citation of data, in the spirit of Plan S where we support:
Long-range access and a persistent pipeline france rcs data to the outputs (and inputs) of research in an evolving data landscape
Public trust in the outputs of research with a focus on ethics, rights, reuse and reproducibility.
Benefits for researchers and research: CiteTheData and impact?
We know that citing data forms good research practice and our aim is for data to be cited with the same rigour applied to journals articles, books, images and other outputs, but what are some of the other benefits?
Transparency
Citing data is a way of clearly showing exactly which version of or influenced research, as well as crediting those who have made the work possible by collecting the data.
Reproducibility
It helps future researchers to find out which data the researcher has used and enable the research to be reproduced to assess its integrity. Louise Corti, Director of Collections Development and Data Publishing for the UK Data Service, has written a great blog about research reproducibility in qualitative research: Show Me the Data.