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More Than Just DOIs, How to Pragmatically Make 50 Years of Diverse Data Centre Holdings and Services Citable, The Perspective and Aspirations of the British Oceanographic Data Centre
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  • Justin Buck,
  • James Ayliffe,
  • Elizabeth Bradshaw,
  • Sean Gaffney,
  • Richenda Houseago-Stokes,
  • Gwenaëlle Moncoiffé,
  • Helen Snaith
Justin Buck
National Oceanography Centre Liverpool

Corresponding Author:juck@bodc.ac.uk

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James Ayliffe
National Oceanography Centre Liverpool
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Elizabeth Bradshaw
National Oceanography Centre Liverpool
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Sean Gaffney
National Oceanography Centre Liverpool
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Richenda Houseago-Stokes
National Oceanography Centre: Southampton
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Gwenaëlle Moncoiffé
National Oceanography Centre Liverpool
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Helen Snaith
National Oceanography Center: Southampton
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Abstract

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019. It holds data collected from 1773 to the present day. Holdings are multidisciplinary, heterogeneous data reflecting the full range of disciplines, platforms, temporal and spatial fieldwork scales typically encountered in oceanographic research and monitoring. These collections vary in granularity and contain data which are at different stages of curation ranging from raw data to standardised data products. BODC need to improve data services to meet the developing the expectations of the research community. These include the FAIR data principles, TRUSTed repository guidelines and CoreTrustSeal accreditation. This is a significant challenge within the constraints of resource available (both financial and human). The initial focus for BODC is making holdings citable with the following aspirations: Application of DOIs to data at the point of receipt by BODC. Publication of data papers and publication of DOIs for data products. Application of persistent identifiers to low level data granules where DOIs are not feasible. Application of persistent identifiers to datasets included in BODC API services and versioning of these data. Work with organisations or groups who include data curated by BODC in their products to enable the provenance of data to be unambiguous. Work with communities on joint data papers where BODC are a partner organisation. This will enable each type of data served by BODC to be unambiguously citable. The initial effort is being directed towards the application of DOIs to data submissions and publication of data papers for BODC curated data products.