Resources for Data Authors

Data authors submit contributions to the EDI Repository and work with an EDI Data Curator through the publication process.

Information managers serving a research group should check out the resources for information managers.

Types of contributions

EDI publishes data from the ecological and environmental sciences irrespective of funding origin. Contributions serve many use cases and are published with an open access license unless a compelling reason warrants an embargo (data policy). Limits on size of publications are typically not a concern, but if the data are > 100 GB in size please contact us, so we can find a workable solution. For more information see Types of Contributions.

Step 1 - Preparing for submission

The data submission will be published in the form of a data package. Deciding what to include in a data package along with some basic considerations for data cleaning go a long way to support future use. The basic rule of thumb is to package the data in a form you would want to receive them in.

EDI recommends publishing with an open license, either CC0 or CC BY 4.0, to prevent undue restrictions on future research. For more information see Licensing Data.

Tracking citations of a published data package and attributing to a research profile is greatly simplified by ORCID iD. Consider getting an ORCID iD today.

Step 2 - Submission

Data submissions require EML metadata and can be sent in one of two ways:

Use the ezEML metadata editor to create EML and submit with the data.
Send EML metadata and data files to the EDI Data Curation Team as email attachments or downloadable links. For more information see Creating Metadata for Publication.

Consider integrating the creation of metadata into the research life cycle for improved data management and simplified publication.

Step 3 - Review

Once submitted, a member of the EDI Data Curation Team will provide a proof of the data package and provide support to fine-tune the submission if needed. For more information see The Review Process.

Step 4 - Publication

When the author is satisfied with the data package, the data curator assigns a DOI and uploads it to the EDI Data Repository. The data package is now published and discoverable through the EDI Data Portal Search Interface, DataONE Repository Network, and the Google Dataset Search Engine. For more information see Finding Data.

Next steps

After publication data authors may want to:

Add the data publication to an ORCID research profile. It will automatically be added to a Google Scholar profile.
Cite the publication in an article.
Add a citing article to the data package.
Advertise the publication. Consider mentioning @EDIgotdata on Twitter or contributing to the EDI Featured Data Series.
Track citations, downloads, and views of the publication.
Report the publication to funders.
Reuse the published data.
Create a customized data catalog for a website.
Respond to issues raised by users to improve the quality of the publication.
Update the published data package with new metadata or data.