Data citation

The British Ocenaographic Data Centre's Published Data Library (PDL) provides snapshots of specially chosen datasets that are archived using rigorous version management. This enables citation in journal papers through the assignment of a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) in collaboration with the British Library.

Programme members wishing to obtain data citation through DOIs must inform British Ocenaographic Data Centre (BODC) upon submitting their data set. Data sets will be published in the PDL and will be made openly available to anyone who wishes to download the data. Data sets submitted to BODC for inclusion in the PDL must remain unchanged for an indefinite period of time or be able to acquire new data whilst the existing data remain unchanged (such as near-real time daily downloads from gliders). Data sets must conform to specific technical criteria, based on good practice criteria adopted across the NERC Environmental Data Centres, to be accepted for publication in the PDL. DOIs will only be issued to base data sets suitable for future re-use in other applications, rather than data reworked specifically for a single research publication (sometimes termed data behind the graph). DOIs will only be issued at BODC’s discretion.

To ensure your data set is formatted to the NERC good practice criteria required for assigning a DOI, please follow the data submission guidelines.