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Dimensions Releases Datasets as a New Content Source for All Users
Digital Science’s Dimensions database will now integrate more than 1.4m datasets as a new content type. The datasets will be available to all users – including those using the free version of Dimensions.
Data will be sourced from figshare.com and include datasets uploaded on figshare, as well as from other repositories such as Dryad, Zenodo, Pangea, and Figshare hosted repositories including NIH. Datasets are defined as items shared on repositories which are categorised as datasets – this excludes e.g. preprints, posters, images, and software. The datasets will be updated daily and more repositories will be added following the initial release. They will become the sixth content type added to Dimensions after grants, publications, citations, alternative metrics, clinical trials and patents.
Christian Herzog, CEO Dimensions, said:
“Since the foundation of the Research Data Alliance in 2013, the acceptance of datasets as first-class research outputs has accelerated: many institutions, publishers and funders promote the publication of research data, and the use of this data. While data sets have been displayed already on the publication detail pages in Dimensions, we are now making them discoverable as a content type on its own right – but integrated in the general context with grants, publications, clinical trials, patents and policy documents.”
The addition of datasets will allow institutions to discover and analyse trends in publicly available data at institutional level and makes even more linked data available in one platform, rather than disconnected databases.
“Datasets are an important research output which many of our users are interested in, Researchers can find datasets for reuse, funders will be able to analyse the impact of grants, it will also be beneficial to organisations interested in making their data more accessible, and publishers looking at where datasets get deposited and publications with associated datasets.”
Mark Hahnel, CEO and founder, Figshare, added:
“Ingestion of datasets into Dimensions demonstrates Digital Science’s commitment to the elevation of data to a first class output, a first step on what we see to be a long and complex, but worthwhile endeavour. Open data should and will be the norm in academic research.”