Code of practice for research data usage metrics release 1

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1 DataCite, Hannover, Germany
2 California Digital Library, Oakland, California, United States
3 National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Santa Barbara, California, United States
4 Cranfield University, Cranfield, United Kingdom
5 Biodiversity Research Institute, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, United States
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.26505v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Data Science, Digital Libraries
Keywords
research data management, usage metrics, counter, code of practice
Copyright
© 2018 Fenner et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Fenner M, Lowenberg D, Jones M, Needham P, Vieglais D, Abrams S, Cruse P, Chodacki J. 2018. Code of practice for research data usage metrics release 1. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26505v1

Abstract

The Code of Practice for Research Data Usage Metrics standardizes the generation and distribution of usage metrics for research data, enabling for the first time the consistent and credible reporting of research data usage. This is the first release of the Code of Practice and the recommendations are aligned as much as possible with the COUNTER Code of Practice Release 5 that standardizes usage metrics for many scholarly resources, including journals and books. With the Code of Practice for Research Data Usage Metrics data repositories and platform providers can report usage metrics following common best practices and using a standard report format. This is an essential step towards realizing usage metrics as a critical component in our understanding of how publicly available research data are being reused. This complements ongoing work on establishing best practices and services for data citation.

Author Comment

This is version 1 of the Code of Practice for Research Data Usage Metrics. The manuscript has not been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal and has not been part of conference proceedings.