DataCite is an international consortium which aims to:

• establish easier access to scientific research data on the Internet, to
• increase acceptance of research data as legitimate, citable contributions to the scientific record, and to
• support data archiving that will permit results to be verified and re-purposed for future study.

Background

In August 2009 a paper was published laying out an approach for a global registration agency for research data. DataCite was subsequently founded in London on 1 Dec 2009, by organisations from 6 countries: the British Library

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

; the Technical Information Center of Denmark (DTIC); the TU Delft Library from the Netherlands; the National Research Council’s Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI); the California Digital Library

California Digital Library

The California Digital Library is the University of California's 11th University Library. The CDL was founded to assist the ten University of California libraries in sharing their resources and holdings more effectively, in part through negotiating and acquiring consortial licenses on behalf of...

 (University of California Curation Center); Purdue University

Purdue University

Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...

 (USA); and the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB).

After the founding of DataCite, leading research libraries and information centres converged for the first official members’ convention in Paris on 5 February 2010. The inclusion of five further members was approved in the office of the International Council for Science (ICSU): Australian National Data Service (ANDS); Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Medizin (ZB MED); GESIS - Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften; French Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (INIST); and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich.

Technical

The primary means of establishing easier access to research data is by DataCite members assigning digital object identifiers (DOIs)

Digital object identifier

A digital object identifier is a character string used to uniquely identify an object such as an electronic document. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found...

 to data sets. DataCite takes an open approach to identifiers, however, and considers other systems and services that help forward its objectives.

Members

• German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB)
• British Library
  British Library
  The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
  
   (BL), UK
• ETH Zurich
  ETH Zurich
  The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....
  
   Library, Switzerland
  Switzerland
  Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
  
  
• Institut de l'information scientifique et technique (INIST-CNRS), France
• National Technical Information Center (DTIC), Denmark
• TU Delft Library, Netherlands
• Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information
  CISTI
  The Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information began in 1924 as the library of the National Research Council of Canada , the leading agency for research and development in Canada. This library took on the role of national science library unofficially in 1957 and became the official...
  
   (CISTI)
• Australian National Data Service
  Australian National Data Service
  The Australian National Data Service was established in 2008 to help address the challenges of storing and managing Australia's research data, and making it discoverable and accessible for validation and reuse...
  
   (ANDS)
• California Digital Library
  California Digital Library
  The California Digital Library is the University of California's 11th University Library. The CDL was founded to assist the ten University of California libraries in sharing their resources and holdings more effectively, in part through negotiating and acquiring consortial licenses on behalf of...
  
   (CDL), USA
• Purdue University Libraries (PUL), USA
• German National Library of Medicine (ZB MED)
• GESIS - Leibniz Institute of Social Sciences, Germany