Data Citation Tutorial at iPres 2012

Monica Duke delivered a tutorial prepared together with Alex Ball at iPres 2012 in Toronto. The tutorial's aim was to examine reasons and requirements for data citation, formats for data citation, and examples and guidance from different disciplines.  The tutorial slides are now available, together with links to the accompanying exercises and a supporting document describing relevant resources.

Data is a valuable part of the scholarly record, and is necessary to support the validation, reproducibility and re-use of research, but currently only a small proportion of it is shared. Often this is because, at least in part, researchers do not feel their contributions would be adequately recognised by data reusers or the community in general, or do not have the know-how to link their data to other scholarly outputs. This barrier could be removed, though, if data citation were a natural and accepted part of the scholarly communication process. Moves to bring this about are gaining momentum, supported by advances in data management, improvements in data repository infrastructure, the emergence of data journals, and agreements on data citation practices.

This aims of the tutorial are to provide an overview of developments in infrastructures, techniques, and initiatives relevant to data citation, and present examples, issues and open questions. The tutorial imparts up-to-date information and raises awareness of current discussions. The goal is for participants to gain an understanding of data citation, why it is important, and how to support it. The tutorial gives a good grounding in all aspects of data citation, knowledge of where to find further information and a greater ability to respond to researchers' data citation needs.

The tutorial examined reasons and requirements for data citation, formats for data citation, and examples and guidance from different disciplines. It introduced related technologies (such as identifiers and vocabularies), and presented an overview of relevant infrastructure (such as data repositories) and initiatives including recent international meetings, organisations like DataCite and ORCID, and communities like Beyond Impact. Participants were encouraged to think about practical implementation issues and how they can support users at their own institutions and organisations. The tutorial aims included covering the basics of data citation, emerging developments such as data journals, and topical questions being addressed by the larger community.

The intended audience for the tutorial includes practitioners with responsibility for supporting researchers with the management of data, e.g. university librarians or other research support staff who may wish to advise on data citation; providers of digital infrastructure (including repository managers and publishers) interested in supporting data citation; and anyone seeking an introduction to data citation. The level of experience for this tutorial is introductory to intermediate. The tutorial assumes some basic understanding of data management principles and scholarly communications, but starts at an introductory level for data citation.