DataCite

Overview

DataCite is an international non-profit organisation providing persistent identifier infrastructure for research outputs, founded in 2009 by a consortium of national research libraries and data centres. It is the primary DOI registration agency for research data, occupying a distinct role from CrossRef, which handles journal articles and book chapters.

Services

• Fabrica (doi.datacite.org) is the DOI registration service used by repositories and data centres to mint and manage DOIs for datasets, software, and other non-publication scholarly outputs.
• Metadata Schema (schema.datacite.org) is the specification defining required and recommended metadata fields for DataCite DOIs. It is aligned with Dublin Core and DCAT, supports ORCID for creator identification and ROR for institutions, and includes typed relationship fields (IsSupplementTo, IsDerivedFrom, IsVersionOf, etc.) that enable machine-readable links between datasets and associated publications or software.
• Commons (commons.datacite.org) is the public search interface for discovering all DataCite-registered research outputs.

Role in the Repository Ecosystem

Virtually every open repository in this graph uses DataCite DOIs as persistent identifiers for deposited objects:

• Zenodo is itself a DataCite member and all deposits receive a DataCite DOI.
• DANDI Archive assigns DataCite DOIs to NWB datasets.
• OpenNeuro assigns DataCite DOIs to BIDS datasets.
• Recherche Data Gouv uses DataCite DOIs for all deposited datasets, via INIST-CNRS as the French DataCite node.
• HAL uses DataCite DOIs for data linked from HAL records.
• OSF assigns DataCite DOIs for registered projects and datasets.

DataCite also operates Make Data Count, a project tracking dataset views and downloads as equivalent metrics to article citations.

Relationship to EOSC and RDA

DataCite is a key infrastructure component of EOSC, providing the persistent identifier layer that makes datasets findable and citable across the European open science cloud. DataCite participates actively in RDA working groups, particularly those dealing with data citation, persistent identifiers and the FAIR data maturity model. DataCite’s metadata is harvested by OpenAIRE and exposed through the EOSC catalogue.

Connections

• Metadata schema aligns with: Dublin Core, DCAT
• Integrates with: EOSC, OpenAIRE, RDA
• Creator identifiers: ORCID
• Institution identifiers: ROR

Resources

• https://datacite.org
• DataCite Fabrica (DOI registration): https://doi.datacite.org
• DataCite Metadata Schema: https://schema.datacite.org
• DataCite Commons (search): https://commons.datacite.org
• Make Data Count: https://makedatacount.org
• https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/recommandations-pour-ladoption-des-identifiants-persistants-dans-lenseignement-superieur-et-la-recherche-2/ (CoSO PID recommendations, 2025, FR)
• https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/recommendations-for-the-adoption-of-persistent-identifiers-in-higher-education-and-research-in-france/ (CoSO PID recommendations, 2025, EN)