Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

Purdue Libraries a founding member of international cooperative to advance research

February 16th, 2010

Purdue University Libraries and a group of other leading research libraries and technical information providers throughout the world have established an international partnership, DataCite, to improve access to research data on the Internet.

DataCite will build upon the system developed by the German National Library of Science and Technology of using Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) for datasets to track information online. A DOI is assigned to each dataset and is a permanent and traceable identifier.

DataCite involves 10 founding partners, including two U.S. institutions, and establishes a nonprofit agency to track and manage data collected during research. The data will be labeled or registered, and other researchers will be able to find and use the data in their own research while citing the original source.

“As science is global with individual researchers working and publishing, DataCite is global with individual local partners to offer services and advice directly where they are needed by the scientists,” said Jan Brase, a DataCite founder. “With expertise and experience through their Distributed Data Curation Center, Purdue University is a most valuable partner for DataCite in the United States.”

James L. Mullins, dean of Purdue Libraries, said, “We’re privileged, along with the California Digital Library, to be one of the two U.S. institutions to be founding partners in this international effort that will link researchers around the world to an ever-increasing mountain of research data. DataCite will establish easier access to scientific research data on the Internet, increase acceptance of research data as a legitimate, citable contribution to the scientific record, and support data archiving that will permit results to be verified and repurposed for future study. DataCite will promote sharing of datasets, increased access and better protection of the research investment.”

In addition to Purdue, the cooperative includes the German National Library of Science and Technology, the British Library, the Library of the ETH Zurich, the French Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, the Technical Information Center of Denmark, the Dutch TU Delft Library, Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, the Australian National Data Service, and the California Digital Library of the University of California system.

Writer: Jim Bush, 765-494-2077, jsbush@purdue.edu

Source: James L. Mullins, 765-494-2900, jmullins@purdue.edu

Original posting: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/general/2010/100210MullinsDataCite.html