British Library leads the way for sharing data as major institutions sign up to DataCite

Five major data centres have expanded their commitment to make research data more accessible through the British Library's DataCite service, a global initiative that addresses the problem of how to find, access and re-use the results of research. BGI is the first Asian data centre, alongside the UK based Archaeology Data Service, the UK Data Archive, the Natural Environment Research Council, the Science & Technology Facilities Council that have signed up to the service and are the first institutions to work with the British Library on this initiative.

Data from the participating organisations, which spans information derived from ice cores to gene sequences, cultural heritage to current populations, will be marked with DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) to enable it to be identified and cited, a system which has been widely used to provide persistent links to academic journal articles. This initiative provides a practical solution to one of the most significant challenges facing researchers today – access to data – an issue highlighted by the UK's Royal Society in a report published in June this year, 'Science as an open enterprise', which recommended that scientists should communicate the data they collect in fieldwork and research more widely. The report specifically highlights the first dataset DOI issued by the BGI, the genome of the deadly 2011 outbreak E. coli strain that killed 50 people in Europe, on its front cover and as an example of "the power of intelligently open data".

The benefits for researchers include:

• Confidence that the link to the data (or information about the data) will be persistently and uniquely identified
• Increased ease of citing data which will, in turn, increase its discovery and access, enabling others to verify the results and validate their own research
• Access to a myriad of new research opportunities which have been out-of-reach until now
• Acknowledgement and credit for sharing data and having it cited

"Enabling researchers to cite data, along with journal articles and other references, is becoming increasingly important, and DataCite has the potential to transform the way scientists communicate their research." said Dr Lee-Ann Coleman, Head of Science, Technology and Medicine at the British Library. "As an institution dedicated to providing information, as well as practical support to researchers, we believe that the British Library DataCite service is addressing some of the barriers to data sharing. We hope that the decision of these five institutions to participate will attract others to become involved, and will mark an important step towards changing community norms about sharing resources."

Professor Wang Jun, Executive Director of the BGI, said: "Being the largest genomics organization and one of the largest producers of biological data in the world, the aim of DataCite to create a scholarly structure that recognises and rewards data producers is very attractive to us. Releasing a number of our previously unpublished datasets with DataCite DOIs has already allowed them to be cited and credited in subsequent publications in high profile journals, such as Nature and Science, and we look forward to finally being able to track and follow our data's ensuing impact." As well as providing an incentive for data producers to release their data more quickly, data citation should also provide better mechanisms for linking and associating datasets to the publications using them, Relevant to this, BGI has launched a new "big-data" journal called GigaScience utilizing this functionality. For more on these developments, data publication and citation will be a topic of discussion at a special session on "Integrating Data & Literature" at BGI's upcoming International Conference on Genomics in Hong Kong on December 1st.

Provided by BGI Shenzhen