Author: Amy E. Hodge

“I was wondering if you know anything about getting datasets discoverable on Google Dataset Search?”

We recently received this query from a Stanford researcher who had deposited content into the Stanford Digital Repository.

The short answer: request a DataCite DOI from Stanford Libraries, which you can do by emailing doi-contact@lists.stanford.edu.

For those of you unfamiliar with Google Dataset Search or who are interested in the details behind the response, read on! 

Stanford Libraries is happy to announce our new membership with the non-profit organization DataCite. DataCite provides persistent identifiers known as DOIs (digital object identifiers) for research data and other digital materials. Because of this new partnership, the Libraries will now be able to provide DOI services to the entire Stanford campus, including to groups like SimTK. A DOI service will help us to support diverse needs to make research outputs and other digital materials persistently available in a way that meets the specific requirements implemented by some funding agencies and publishers. 

For nearly four years, the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR) has been home to the research outputs of scientists and scholars from across Stanford’s campus. But while those data files, videos, source code, microscopy images, survey results, maps and more have been discoverable and accessible through the Libraries’ online catalog, SearchWorks, it has been hard to get an overview of all the available data. Until now.

It’s one thing to talk about an area of land under dispute, and it’s another thing entirely to see it on a map. Professor of Political Science Kenneth Schultz demonstrates the validity of this statement with his recent work, “Mapping Interstate Territorial Conflict,” which was published in December in the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Stanford Libraries’ persistent URL (PURL) pages are getting a new look!

The new pages have been designed to improve the way users interact with the content on PURL pages and to integrate these pages more seamlessly with the rest of Stanford Libraries’ web presence.

From the new embed viewer you can now obtain the html code required to embed this content on any web page — including your own personal web page or that of your lab or project.

Faculty retire, projects end, and the outputs of important research languish on forgotten hard drives and servers. It happens all the time. But retiring Professors Atilla Aydin and David Pollard wanted to be sure it didn’t happen to them. For 25 years they co-directed the Stanford Rock Fracture Project (RFP) in the Geology and Environmental Sciences Department, but they were concerned about the long-term availability of the research outputs of that project once they retired. 

Until they found out about the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR).