DOI for data in the ESA space science archives and Google dataset search

Abstract:

Reproducibility is at the core of Science. For this reason, it has become a common practice for authors to provide links to the data used in their manuscripts upon submission to peer-reviewed journals, both for results based on measurements and on simulations. In space physics and astronomy in general, reference to archives’ websites of major data providers like space agencies are for the moment still accepted by most journals. However, these websites cannot serve as persistent links and will eventually not be accepted once journals require full compliance with the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) data principles. On the contrary, Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) associated to specific datasets or group of datasets can provide persistent links. DOIs have been widely adopted by the publishing industry and the research world in particular. For instance, all published peer-reviewed articles are nowadays associated to a DOI. Furthermore, DOIs would not only link refereed publications to their data, but could also offer the capability for data producers and data publishers to eventually trace the use of their data, by requesting or even enforcing the use of the corresponding DOIs in publications. For data producers, proper attribution is important in the context of securing research grants or extension of projects, including also space missions. Additionally, structured metadata included in the DOI landing pages offer the possibility for datasets to be discoverable by the new Google Dataset Search engine, available since January 2020. This presentation is meant to describe the on-going activities at the European Space Agency (ESA) to mint DOIs for datasets served across the space science archives, and how a subset of these DOIs are already discoverable by Google.