Six months ago, we launched an API endpoint for data citations. We said we’d give an update on progress after half a year, and here it is. The headline is that we won’t be making any big changes yet and will keep it running for another 6 months.
Data citations are important to our community and a key component of open research. Previously, we supported them through Event Data. When we made the decision to close Event Data, we knew that we needed an alternative way of delivering data citations. We decided that a standalone endpoint was the answer.
Six months ago the new service was launched. It’s been running smoothly and we have received positive feedback from users along with a few suggestions for improvements. Overall, it seems to be meeting the goals we set out and there is a growing base of regular users.
Given that, why not move it out of beta now? There are a couple of reasons. First, the service has been very stable and the number of users is still small. It means that we can keep it running on the current infrastructure and continue to track usage. Second, we have a lot of changes to other systems coming up and not all of them are fully planned yet. Some of those changes will impact on how we deliver metadata and may affect data citations. We want to give the opportunity for more of that planning to happen before we commit to the future of the data citations endpoint in the form that it is in now.
We are still interested in hearing about your experience with data citations. If you have feedback, please leave a comment.