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Over the past few months we have been adding to the metadata and functionality of our REST API, Crossref’s public machine interface for the metadata of all 90 million+ registered content items. Much of the work focused on a review and upgrade of the API’s code and architecture in order to better support its rapidly growing usage. But we have also extended the types of metadata that the API can deliver.

We’ve been talking about it at events, blogging about it on our site, living it, breathing it, and even sometimes dreaming about it, and now we are delighted to announce that Crossref Event Data has entered Beta.

When we set up the eLife journal in 2012, we knew datasets were an important component of research content and decided to give them prominence in a section entitled ‘Major datasets’ (see images below). Within this section, major previously published and generated datasets are listed. We also strongly encourage data citations in the reference list.

Please visit Crossref’s official Data & Software Citations Deposit Guide for deposit details.

Very carefully, one at a time? However you wish.

Last year, we introduced linking publication metadata to associated data and software when registering publisher content with Crossref Linking Publications to Data and Software. This blog post follows the “whats” and “whys” with the all-important “how(s)” for depositing data and software citations. We have made the process simple and fairly straightforward: publishers deposit data & software links by adding them directly into the standard metadata deposit via relation type and/or references. This is part of the **existing Content Registration ** process and requires no new workflows.

TL;DR Crossref and Datacite provide a service to link publications and data. The easiest way for Crossref members to participate in this is to cite data using DataCite DOIs and to include them in the references within the metadata deposit. These data citations are automatically detected. Alternatively and/or additionally, Crossref members can deposit data citations (regardless of identifier) as a relation type in the metadata. Data & software citations from both methods are freely propagated.

Crossref began its service by linking publications to other publications via references. Today, this extends to relationships with associated entities. People (authors, reviewers, editors, other collaborators), funders, and research affiliations are important players in this story. Other metadata also figure prominently in it as well: references, licenses and access indicators, publication history (updates, revisions, corrections, retractions, publication dates), clinical trial and study information, etc. The list goes on. What is lesser known (and utilized) is that Crossref is increasingly linking publications to associated scholarly artifacts.

Test out the early preview of Event Data while we continue to develop it. Share your thoughts. And be warned: we may break a few eggs from time to time!

Want to discover which research works are being shared, liked and commented on? What about the number of times a scholarly item is referenced? Starting today, you can whet your appetite with an early preview of the forthcoming Crossref Event Data service. We invite you to start exploring the activity of DOIs as they permeate and interact with the world after publication.

Anybody who knows me or reads this blog is probably aware that I don’t exactly hold back when discussing problems with the DOI system. But just occasionally I find myself actually defending the thing…

TL;DR

Watch a real-time stream of DOIs being cited (and “un-cited!” ) in Wikipedia articles across the world: https://live.eventdata.crossref.org/live.html

Background

For years we’ve known that the Wikipedia was a major referrer of Crossref DOIs and about a year ago we confirmed that, in fact, the Wikipedia is the 8th largest refer of Crossref DOIs. We know that people follow the DOIs, too. This despite a fraction of Wikipedia citations to the scholarly literature even using DOIs. So back in August we decided to create a Wikimedia Ambassador programme. The goal of the programme was to promote the use of persistent identifiers in citation and attribution in Wikipedia articles. We would do this through outreach and through the development of better citation-related tools.

TL;DR

Crossref’s “DOI Event Tracker Pilot”- 11 million+ DOIs & 64 million+ events. You can play with it at: http://goo.gl/OxImJa

Tracking DOI Events

So have you been wondering what we’ve been doing since we posted about the experiments we were conducting using PLOS’s open source ALM code? A lot, it turns out. About a week after our post, we were contacted by a group of our members from OASPA who expressed an interest in working with the system. Apparently they were all about to conduct similar experiments using the ALM code, and they thought that it might be more efficient and interesting if they did so together using our installation. Yippee. Publishers working together. That’s what we’re all about.