3 minute read.Strengthening support for data citations and saying goodbye to Event Data
We’re excited to announce a new data citation API endpoint and are seeking your feedback. The new service makes existing data citation relationships in our metadata available, thereby surfacing this part of the research nexus. At the same time, we’ve decided that it’s time to move on from Event Data.
Time to say goodbye
Metadata about published scholarly research has evolved, and continues to evolve in exciting ways. A published article, book, or conference paper is only a single piece of the puzzle. A host of digital identifiers and items can be put together to form a more complete picture of a research project. This is what forms the basis of the research nexus—a rich and reusable open network of relationships connecting research organisations, people, things, and actions; a scholarly record that the global community can build on forever, for the benefit of society.
Ten years ago, we launched Event Data to surface mentions of research around the Internet. What were people saying about published research? Could this discourse contribute to post-publication review and validation? We set up Event Data to capture use of Crossref DOIs in the online world from a variety of sources, including blog posts, social media, websites, and annotations. The idea was that diverse mentions (or “events”) could supplement traditional citation counts as a way to capture the value of research.
Today, the focus is increasingly on transparency, research integrity, and the completeness of outputs. Trust in research is shaped by knowing who the funder was, being able to reanalyse the original data, or checking for bugs in the analysis code. There are also more identifiers for objects within the research space and they are used more widely. This shift is evident in the relatively low usage of Event Data. We can no longer justify the resources and cost that goes into maintaining it as a service. Instead, we will focus on enabling and surfacing relationships between different types of research outputs, starting with links to datasets.
For these reasons, we have decided to sunset the Event Data API and from 23 April 2026 it will no longer be available (although access to historical data will still be possible on request). In its place, we’re making available an API endpoint for data citations.
Visibility for data citations
The new API endpoint focuses solely on data citations and uses references and relationships deposited by Crossref members, including Crossref articles referencing datasets with either Crossref or DataCite DOIs. While our metadata contains many data citations, and some of them are labelled as data citations, it is often difficult to find them because they are swamped in number by regular citations. If you are trying to get data citations directly from our REST API, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. This new endpoint makes connections easier to find, enabling organisations to track when research is reused, cited, and built upon. By putting this metadata into a dedicated service, we are making it easier for interested organisations to track and find data citations. Our goal is to make existing sets of connections easier to access, giving clarity to how scholarly works link to the data that supports them.
This beta version will allow us the opportunity to incorporate feedback from the community and make changes to improve delivery. We received early positive feedback from a number of interested organisations. Later this year we will assess whether it is ready for production, needs more work, or if insufficient interest from the community suggests we should pursue a different solution.
Anyone interested in data citations is invited to try the new endpoint. Please let us know your feedback via the community forum. You can find supporting documentation on our website and Swagger documentation, including the opportunity to try out features.
