Developing Data Citations from Digital Object Identifier Metadata

Abstract:

NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project has been processing information for the registration of Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) for the last five years of which an automated system has been in operation for the last two years. The ESDIS DOI registration system has registered over 2000 DOIs with over 1000 DOIs held in reserve until all required information has been collected. By working towards the goal of assigning DOIs to the 8000+ data collections under its management, ESDIS has taken the first step towards facilitating the use of data citations with those products.

When registering DOIs, ESDIS requires certain DOI elements be collected for the DOI landing page as recommended by NASA’s Earth Science Data System Working Group (ESDSWG). The landing page provides sufficient information to 1) identify NASA data as referenced in a science publication, 2) credit data creators and distributors, and 3) access the data itself enabling the trace-ability and reproducibility of the data. However, the required elements for this DOI landing page are also the core required elements for forming an Earth science data citation.

Data citations are getting significant attention from the scientific community and data centers alike. So to encourage the citing of Earth science data products, each product DOI landing page displays a sample data citation and makes the required citation elements available to DataCite for use in its Data Citation generation tool. This paper will describe that process.

ESDIS data centers are constantly developing technologies to better serve the Earth science user community such as Geospatial Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure (GIOVANNI), Land and Atmospheric Near Real-Time Capability for EOS (LANCE), and advanced tools that support virtual data collections, and virtual data products. These all provide easier access to data and make possible the creation of data products with user specified parameters. However, assigning digital identifiers to such products present a unique challenge to ESDIS. This paper will also discuss possible approaches for assigning DOIs to products produced by these special tools and services.