Consolidating da|ra – Shaping the future of DOI Registration 

da|ra – Registration Agency for Social Science and Economic Data, a consortium at DataCite, is currently under consolidation. Since 2010, da|ra runs its own layer to register research objects, such as data, with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), employing an own metadata schema to foster FAIR data sharing. Nowadays, DataCite offers a low-threshold registration platform, i.e., DataCite Fabrica, and a metadata schema that considers most of the metadata relevant to describe social science and economic data. The consortium (co-)lead thus decided to transfer DOI registration from the da|ra layer to DataCite Fabrica, phasing out the layer and its metadata database.  

da|ra – Registrierungsagentur für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsdaten, ein Konsortium bei DataCite, befindet sich derzeit in der Umstrukturierung. Seit 2010 betreibt da|ra eine eigene Plattform zur Registrierung von Forschungsobjekten mittels eines Digital Object Identifiers (DOI), inklusive eines eigenen Metadatenschemas zur Förderung der FAIR Data Principles. Mit DataCite Fabrica steht mittlerweile eine niedrigschwellige Möglichkeit der DOI-Registrierung zur Verfügung. Das zugehörige DataCite Metadatenschema umfasst dabei relevante Metadaten zur Beschreibung sozial- und wirtschaftswissenschaftlicher Daten. Die Leitung des da|ra-Konsortiums hat daher beschlossen, die DOI-Registrierung von da|ra auf DataCite Fabrica umzustellen und die da|ra-Plattform ebenso wie die zugehörige Metadatendatenbank auslaufen zu lassen.

DOI: 10.34879/gesisblog.2025.97

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da|ra – Registration Agency for Social Science and Economic Data 

da|ra – Registration Agency for Social Science and Economic Data is currently under consolidation, aiming to re-arrange the da|ra consortium at DataCite and transferring DOI registration from the so called da|ra layer to DataCite Fabrica. da|ra is a consortium at DataCite, led by GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences and co-led by ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics. It enables its members to register research objects, such as data, with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), improving citation, findability, and accessibility of such objects, as required, e.g., by the FAIR Data Principles. In 2010, da|ra started as a pilot project to develop technical and organizational concept of DOI registration at GESIS. Since 2011, the registration service is available for research data centres and data producers in the social sciences and economics in Germany and around the world. 

When establishing DOI as the primary persistent identifier for research objects, da|ra provided a low-threshold registration platform for its members, the da|ra layer. It employs an own metadata schema (current version 4.0) to best describe social science and economic data. Based on schema.org to annotate different types of resources, da|ra offers high quality metadata, increasing visibility and findability of research objects. da|ra is indexed, e.g., by DataCite Commons, B2Find, or Google Dataset Search. In addition, the da|ra metadata database is used by different actors in the German research infrastructure landscape to enable searching for research objects, e.g., by the German Data Forum (RatSWD) or the German Network of Educational Research Data (VerbundFDB).  

Improving the presence of da|ra at DataCite 

A first consolidation phase to re-structure the da|ra consortium took place in 2020/21, considering far-reaching innovations at DataCite regarding its structure, the membership at DataCite, and the implementation of a fee model. Aiming to focus more on the registration of data from the social sciences and economics, GESIS and ZBW formed the da|ra consortium, restricting da|ra service to data from related disciplines and cancelling service contracts with repositories for purely text-based registrations in 2020.  

Today, da|ra is in a second consolidation phase. To improve efficiency of DOI registration and to make da|ra fit for its future, the consortium structure at DataCite is re-arranged and DOI registration is transferred from the da|ra layer to DataCite Fabrica. After several years of a generic growth of da|ra, the consortium (co-)lead agreed on re-arranging the consortium, adapting its structure more closely to the one of DataCite. To do so, the consortium (co-)lead re-organized the membership of consortium organisations within da|ra, ensuring, e.g., that each prefix, used for DOI registration, is assigned to a unique repository in DataCite to avoid confusion in registering, curating, and updating metadata in the future. This re-organisation step mainly took place in 2023 and 2024, now enabling the consortium (co-)lead to realize the second step of consolidation, the transfer of DOI registration. 

Transferring DOI registration from the da|ra layer to DataCite Fabrica 

DOI registration was crucial and the metadata schema provided hardly covered social science and economic data in the early years of DataCite, DataCite Fabrica now offers a low-threshold registration platform, enabling simple registration of DOI as well as updating metadata of register objects. Likewise, the current version of DataCite’s metadata schema (version 4.6) covers most of the metadata relevant to describe social science and economic data.  

Transferring DOI registration from the da|ra layer to DataCite Fabrica is first and foremost a technical issue, requiring accessibility of DataCite repositories by all da|ra members as well as a new user interface of the registration platform. DataCite Fabrica allows DOI registration via webform, by XML upload, or the DataCite REST API. da|ra members, employing the webform or XML upload, must re-organise their workflows for DOI registration and adapt their XML templates according to some changes in the (name of) properties of DataCite’s metadata schema.  

The DataCite REST API enables automated DOI registration directly from the existing research workflows, eliminating the need for manual intervention. The migration from the da|ra API to the DataCite REST API necessitates da|ra members to update their workflows both for DOI registration and for updating metadata of registered objects. Moreover, it requires da|ra members to adapt specific metadata for their objects and to publish this metadata via DataCite using the DataCite REST API, rather than relying on the previous system of transferring metadata to the da|ra layer. 

Finally, deactivating the da|ra layer, the da|ra website will be re-launched and the da|ra metadata schema will be phased out, in a third step of consolidation. Metadata of future registrations, processed directly via DataCite Fabrica, will no longer be integrated into the da|ra metadata database. Consequently, web applications to search for data that relay on the da|ra metadata database need to be migrated to DataCite Commons and the DataCite REST API to enable user searching for registered objects, in the future.  

A glance into the future 

To realize the ongoing consolidation and the transfer of DOI registration, the consortium (co-)lead offers individual support for all da|ra members to ensure continuity in DOI registration and metadata updates. Thereby the consortium (co-)lead aims to improve da|ra and its future, technically as well as organizational. In the future, the da|ra consortium will strengthen its focus on the registration of data from social sciences and economics in German speaking countries, e.g., by providing best practice advice on DOI registration. Doing so, the consortium (co-)lead looks forward to a new decade of DOI registration with all its challenges, opportunities, and highlights, to e.g. improve the FAIRness of social science and economic research data.