As part of the claddier project, we have been working on a number of issues associated with how one publishes data (as opposed to journal articles which may or may not describe data).

We’re about to submit this paper to a reputable journal. Some of you will recognise concepts (and maybe even some text) from various blog postings over the years. Any constructive comments would be gratefully received!

The abstract reads:

This paper presents a discussion of the issues associated with formally publishing data in academia. We begin by motivating the reasons why formal publication of data is necessary, which range from simple fact that it is possible, to the changing disciplinary requirements. We then discuss the meaning of publication and peer review in the context of data, provide a detailed description of the activities one expects to see in the peer review of data, and present a simple taxonomy of data publication methodologies. Finally, we introduce the issues of dataset granularity, transience and semantics in the context of a discussion of how to cite datasets, before presenting recommended citation syntax.