# DataCite
## Overview
DataCite is an international non-profit organisation providing persistent identifier infrastructure for research outputs, founded in 2009 by a consortium of national research libraries and data centres. It is the primary DOI registration agency for research data, occupying a distinct role from CrossRef, which handles journal articles and book chapters.
## Services
- **Fabrica** (doi.datacite.org) is the DOI registration service used by repositories and data centres to mint and manage DOIs for datasets, software, and other non-publication scholarly outputs.
- **Metadata Schema** (schema.datacite.org) is the specification defining required and recommended metadata fields for DataCite DOIs. It is aligned with [[Dublin Core]] and [[DCAT]], supports [[ORCID]] for creator identification and [[ROR]] for institutions, and includes typed relationship fields (IsSupplementTo, IsDerivedFrom, IsVersionOf, etc.) that enable machine-readable links between datasets and associated publications or software.
- **Commons** (commons.datacite.org) is the public search interface for discovering all DataCite-registered research outputs.
## Role in the Repository Ecosystem
Virtually every open repository in this graph uses DataCite DOIs as persistent identifiers for deposited objects:
- [[Zenodo]] is itself a DataCite member and all deposits receive a DataCite DOI.
- [[DANDI Archive]] assigns DataCite DOIs to NWB datasets.
- [[OpenNeuro]] assigns DataCite DOIs to BIDS datasets.
- [[Recherche Data Gouv]] uses DataCite DOIs for all deposited datasets, via INIST-CNRS as the French DataCite node.
- [[HAL]] uses DataCite DOIs for data linked from HAL records.
- [[OSF]] assigns DataCite DOIs for registered projects and datasets.
DataCite also operates Make Data Count, a project tracking dataset views and downloads as equivalent metrics to article citations.
## Relationship to EOSC and RDA
DataCite is a key infrastructure component of [[EOSC]], providing the persistent identifier layer that makes datasets findable and citable across the European open science cloud. DataCite participates actively in [[RDA]] working groups, particularly those dealing with data citation, persistent identifiers and the FAIR data maturity model. DataCite's metadata is harvested by [[OpenAIRE]] and exposed through the EOSC catalogue.
## Connections
- Metadata schema aligns with: [[Dublin Core]], [[DCAT]]
- Integrates with: [[EOSC]], [[OpenAIRE]], [[RDA]]
- Creator identifiers: [[ORCID]]
- Institution identifiers: [[ROR]]
## Resources
- https://datacite.org
- DataCite Fabrica (DOI registration): https://doi.datacite.org
- DataCite Metadata Schema: https://schema.datacite.org
- DataCite Commons (search): https://commons.datacite.org
- Make Data Count: https://makedatacount.org
- https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/recommandations-pour-ladoption-des-identifiants-persistants-dans-lenseignement-superieur-et-la-recherche-2/ (CoSO PID recommendations, 2025, FR)
- https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/recommendations-for-the-adoption-of-persistent-identifiers-in-higher-education-and-research-in-france/ (CoSO PID recommendations, 2025, EN)