Research Article: “Data Journals: A Survey”

Data occupy a key role in our information society. However, although the amount of published data continues to grow and terms like “data deluge” and “big data” today characterize numerous (research) initiatives, a lot of work is still needed in the direction of publishing data in order to make them effectively discoverable, available, and reusable by others. Several barriers hinder data publishing, from lack of attribution and rewards, vague citation practices, quality issues, to a rather general lack of data sharing culture. Lately, data journals came forward as a solution to overcome some of these barriers. In this study of more than 100 currently existing data journals, we describe the approaches they promote for datasets description, availability, citation, quality and open access. We close by identifying ways to expand and strengthen the data journals approach as a means to actually promote datasets access and exploitation.

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