The latest upgrade of Edinburgh DataShare, from version 2.2 to 2.3, brings in several useability improvements.

• Embargo expiry reminder
  If you want to deposit your data in DataShare, but you want to impose a delay before your files become freely downloadable, you can apply an embargo to your submission – see our “Checklist for deposit” for a fuller explanation of the embargo feature. As of DataShare v2.3, if you apply an embargo to your deposit, DataShare will now send you an email reminder one week before the embargo is due to expire. This gives you time to make us aware if you need the embargo to be extended, or to send us the details of your paper if it has been published, so that we can add those to the metadata, to help users understand your data.
• DOI added to the citation field immediately
  When your DataShare deposit is approved by the curator, the system mints a new DOI for you. As of version 2.3, DataShare now immediately appends the URL containing that DOI into the “Citation” field, which is visible at the top of the summary view page of your item. The “Citation” field makes it easy for others to cite your data, because it provides them with text which they can copy and paste into any manuscript (or any other document where they want to cite the data). Previously you would have had to click on “Show full item record” to look for the DOI in the “Persistent identifier” field, or wait for an overnight script to paste the DOI onto the end of the “Citation” field.

• Tombstone records
  We now have the ability to leave a ‘tombstone’ record in place for any DataShare item that is withdrawn. We only withdraw items in exceptional circumstances – for example where there is a substantive error or omission in the data, such that we feel merely labelling the item as “Superseded” is not sufficient. Now, when we tombstone an item, the files become unavailable indefinitely, but the metadata remain visible at the DOI and handle URLs. Whereas until now, every withdrawn item has become completely invisible, so that the original DOI and handle URLs produced a ‘not found’ error.

Cortical parcellation citation – now with DOI!

Enjoy!

Pauline Ward

Research Data Service

P.S. Many thanks to our software developer at EDINA, George Hamilton, who actually coded all these enhancements to DataShare, which uses the open-source DSpace system. EDINA’s DataShare code is available at https://github.com/edina/dspace .