Digital Object Identifiers for Scientific Research Data: Benefits from the Researcher Perspective

Scientific research data increasingly play an integral role in research and collaboration.  Recognizing this, OSTI offers a data search tool and a service for registering datasets with digital object identifiers, or permanent, electronic identification assigned to individual documents or datasets.

DOE Data Explorer (DDE), launched in 2008, is a search tool that helps users explore DOE data by identifying publicly available collections or sources of DOE-sponsored scientific research data and allowing users to retrieve individual datasets within some of those collections.  In 2011, OSTI began offering a service enabling DOE researchers to obtain DOIs for individual datasets, and the DDE database began including those individual items as well.  Through the DOE Data ID Service, OSTI assigns DOIs to datasets submitted by DOE and its contractor and grantee researchers and registers the DOIs with DataCite, an international organization that supports data visibility, ease of data citation in scholarly publications, data preservation and future re-use, and data access and retrievability.

The DOE Data ID Service is a useful tool for increasing access to digital data, as the DOE Public Access Plan noted: "The Department's Office of Scientific and Technical Information can provide digital object identifiers to datasets resulting from DOE-funded research.  To improve the discoverability of and attribution for datasets created and used in the course of the research, DOE encourages the citation and identification of datasets with persistent identifiers such as DOIs."

DOIs for the Materials Project and the ARM Data Archive

So what do data researchers see as the greatest benefits of having DOIs assigned to their data? 

Patrick Huck of the Materials Project at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a prolific user of the DOE Data ID Service, has registered over 70,000 datasets with DOIs.  The Materials Project provides open web-based access to computed information on known and predicted materials, as well as powerful analysis tools to inspire and design novel materials.  The Materials Project employs an approach to materials science inspired by genomics.  But rather than sequencing genomes, researchers are using supercomputers to characterize the properties of inorganic compounds, such as their stability, voltage, capacity, and oxidation state. 

As Huck has pointed out in a number of presentations about data and DOI registration, while it is helpful to be able to cite a paper that describes the data or materials, it is even more useful to be able to assign DOIs directly to the data or materials because this allows for more precise citation and subsequent discovery.  Instead of just citing a paper that describes the data, a researcher can cite it specifically and provide a stable, direct link to the actual data.

Another dynamic user of the DOE Data ID Service has been Giri Prakash at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a principal investigator for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Archive.  ARM is a multi-laboratory, interagency program and a key contributor to national and international research efforts related to global climate change.  All the data obtained from ARM research are found in the ARM Data Archive, which is pioneering the DOI concept for large-scale continuous datastreams. 

In a recent paper discussing DOIs and citation, Prakash outlined the benefits of assigning DOIs to data:

By assigning DOIs to data, scientists link their article to the exact data used for research, which is critical if (1) other researchers wish to reproduce the same results; (2) people responsible for generating the data wish to get credit for their contribution; ... and [3] publishers wish to link the journal article to the cited data and help readers access the data over the years.

OSTI provides this free data registration to enhance DOE's management of this important resource.  In addition, as a member of DataCite, OSTI can assign DOIs to other federal agencies' datasets on a cost-reimbursable basis.  For information about this interagency service, to make your DOE-funded research data more discoverable by registering it for a DOI, or to learn more about the DOE Data Explorer or the DOE Data ID Service, please contact us at either ddecomments@osti.gov or DOEDataID@osti.gov.