Out of Cite, Out of Mind: The Current State of Practice, Policy, and Technology for the Citation of Data

抄録

The use of published digital data, like the use of digitally published literature, depends upon the ability to identify, authenticate, locate, access, and interpret them. Data citations provide necessary support for these functions, as well as other functions such as attribution of credit and establishment of provenance. References to data, however, present challenges not encountered in references to literature. For example, how can one specify a particular subset of data in the absence of familiar conventions such as page numbers or chapters? The traditions and good practices for maintaining the scholarly record by proper references to a work are well established and understood in regard to journal articles and other literature, but attributing credit by bibliographic references to data are not yet so broadly implemented. This report discusses the current state of data citation practices, its supporting infrastructure, a set of guiding principles for implementing data citation, challenges to implementation of good data citation practices, and open research questions.