Mechanism to describe access information in the DataCite Metadata Schema

[KellyStathis]

What is the problem that your suggestion solves?

• Filtering to retrieve only publicly available resources
• Understanding whether a resource is publicly available or restricted (and if restricted, what's the mechanism and criteria to access?)

What solution might meet your needs?

A new property for access information, including an attribute for "access level" with controlled values (e.g., from the COAR vocabulary for access rights). There could also be a way to describe the mechanism or process to access the resource, likely with free text.

Some work done to explore this here:

• Read, Kevin B., Grant Gibson, Amber Leahey, Lynn Peterson, Sarah Rutley, Julie Shi, Victoria Smith, and Kelly Stathis. 2024. "Identifying metadata commonalities across restricted health data sources: A mixed methods study exploring how to improve the discovery of and access to restricted datasets." Journal of eScience Librarianship 13 (2): e907. https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.907.

Your name

Kelly Stathis

Your organization

DataCite

What alternatives have you tried or considered?

• The Rights property has be used for this but isn't fit for purpose. Rights is for licensing information, which is distinct from whether a resource is publicly available, restricted, or embargoed.
• A Distribution property has been considered which included "access level" information at the file level. This suggestion pertains to the resource (DOI) level—access information should be available regardless of whether distribution/file information is present.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

No response

What group(s) would benefit from your suggestion?

• DataCite members registering DOIs and metadata and administering accounts
• Developers building integrations with DataCite services
• Harvesters who index DataCite DOIs and metadata
• Individuals or institutions analyzing DataCite DOIs and metadata
• DataCite staff
• Other

If other group(s), please describe.

No response

[KujaEx]

Hello,
I would also like to emphasize the importance of this issue. We have datasets in our repository (MyCoRe/MIR) that can be either Open Access or Closed Access (or under embargo). The metadata is stored there using MODS. However, when a DOI is registered with DataCite, this access information unfortunately gets lost. We can see this problem, for example, here:

Dataset (currently Closed Access): https://doi.org/10.71758/refodat.47
Metadata at DataCite: https://api.datacite.org/dois/10.71758/refodat.47
OpenAlex: https://openalex.org/works?page=1&include_xpac=true&filter=ids.openalex:w6958628906

OpenAlex incorrectly classifies the dataset as Open Access. It probably bases this assumption on the license, the repository’s general status (assuming it is an entirely Open Access repository), or some other criterion. The issue is that the DataCite metadata lacks a field to correctly specify the access status of the actual files. I would also support adopting the COAR schema for this purpose.

Best regards,
Kevin Lang