Complex Citations Working Group

Welcome to the RDA Complex Citation Working Group

Purpose

This working group proposes to address the use case of citing a large number of existing objects (e.g., datasets, software, or physical samples) in a way that allows credit for individual objects to be properly assigned. Such collections of objects may contain hundreds to millions+ of elements, and the ‘complex’ citation might need to encompass subsets of elements from multiple collections. The working term “reliquary” is used to refer to this concept throughout this document.  However, there exist a number of alternative terms including Data Collection, Package, Crate and more. Infrastructure and guidance are still required to make it easier for researchers to use this type of citation and to receive or give credit for the object used in the research. Solving the problem of these reliquary citations is critical to enabling reproducible research. Moreover, enabling these complex reliquary citations will be important for researchers to be able to trace citation and usage of their work and report on its impact to funders. For policy makers, it will allow the effects of policy decisions to be accurately tracked through citation and analysis of the supporting data. 

In this Working Group we want to expand on the work that happened during 2021, when a tenacious group of researchers, repositories managers, infrastructure experts, journal staff, and indexers worked to define the problem, with a focus on scoping the considerations to using data collection citations and enabling credit to data creators. This group conceived of a basic approach that applies to most situations and has begun drafting recommendations. Now, we want to engage with the broad RDA community to fully develop the recommendations, identify adopters, and work on promoting these recommendations to adopters for endorsement. 

We invite all to join us. but especially those with an interest in PIDs (e.g., Digital Object Identifier - DOI), FAIR Digital Objects, and DOI collections, such as repositories creating DOI collections and journals supporting citing aggregations of PIDs, as well as funders and others with an interest in enabling and tracking credit for the elements of a DOI collection.

Get Involved

1. Join us! Join as a Member to get on the email list.
2. Contact one of the Chairs: Shelley Stall (sstall@agu.org), Deb Agarwal (daagarwal@lbl.gov), Martina Stockhause (stockhause@dkrz.de), Lesley Wyborn (lesley.wyborn@anu.edu.au).
3. Review our Case Statement.

RDA Plenary Involvements

• RDA Plenary 19: BoF: Complex Data Citations: Formulating a Community Recommendation
• RDA Plenary 20: Complex Citations in the Earth and Space Sciences: Formulating Requirements for a Demonstration Prototype (pending approval)

Work Plan Activities

• Months 1-6: Develop the current use cases and create a prototype for demonstration, review and consideration. 

• Months 6-9: Create a set of recommendations. 

• Months 9 - 12: Implement one or more prototypes

• Months 12-18: Support adoption and additional implementation.