ABSTRACT

Data Citation: DOI-Enabling GEOSS Discovery and Access

David Arctur (University of Texas at Austin), Robert Arko (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory), Stefano Nativi (CNR, ESSI Lab), Joan Starr (California Digital Library)

Data citation is enabling much more than just discovery of published resources; it is enabling direct linking of data in a way that enables its use in technical papers, websites, presentations, and other data sets. Furthermore, it represents a contract for permanent availability and access to the referenced data.

From Wikipedia: “A DOI name differs from standard identifiers such as the ISBN. The purpose of an identifier registry is to manage a given collection of identifiers, whereas the primary purpose of the DOI system is to make a collection of identifiers actionable and interoperable.”

There is considerable current discussion on roles and conventions for using DOIs with Earth and space science data. An important aspect of this is the metadata schema used with DOIs. This schema, based on the indecs Content Model, has some overlap with the ISO 19115 content model. DataCite, a consortium of leading research libraries and scientific data centers, has a registry of over 3 million DOIs and their metadata. The DataCite DOI metadata schema has added new features that support the geoscience community, such as a GeoLocation element and the ability to supply extra discipline-specific metadata. Numerous geoscience data providers routinely publish DOIs using the DataCite schema. By mapping the DOI metadata to ISO 19115, and harvesting DataCite’s DOI registry, the GEO Discovery and Access Broker (DAB) can add an immensely valuable resource to its already-significant distributed catalogs.

This presentation reviews the current discussion of DOI usage in geoscience research, and the role that GEOSS can now play in connecting this with a broader community.