The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released a white paper titled 'We Need Publishing Standards for Datasets and Data Tables'. The paper examines the problems with current data discoverability and citations and the remedy in creating industry standards for bibliographic dataset metadata and linking.
Written by Toby Green, Head of Publishing at OECD and an expert in data publishing, the paper details the problems with user ability to locate and reference online data. Datasets are a significant part of the scholarly record and being published much more frequently but with widely inconsistent metadata, links and citations. The paper proposes bibliographic metadata standards that could be implemented to provide users and librarians with data that is as accessible and easy to find and catalogue as written works like journal articles and book chapters. By following existing scholarly metadata standards, datasets can easily utilise the existing discovery channels that are used by e-journals and e-books, including library systems, cross reference linking, publishing platforms and search engines.
The paper seeks to provide straightforward standards that publishers, librarians and data providers can implement to improve the accessibility and usage of important datasets. This applies both to the data that underlies scholarly works and data that is published in its own right.
The white paper can be accessed online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/603233448430.
