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Hi all, I have a problem related to data publication and citation and I wonder if anyone on this list could provide advice. MalariaGEN (the project I work for) is generating data on genetic variation in parasite populations in different parts of the world. We recently published a paper [1] accompanied by a dataset [2] which comprises a catalog of genetic variations (SNPs) with allele frequencies found in different populations. We'd like to provide advice to others using the SNP catalog dataset on how the dataset should be cited. Because this dataset accompanies a peer-reviewed paper, we are just advising people to cite the paper (i.e., "Manske, Miotto et al., blah blah"). This fairly standard practice I think for citing data that accompanies a published paper, and means that the authors will get recognition for anyone citing the data. The problem we have is that MalariaGEN project is ongoing, and the recent paper [1] is just a snapshot of work in progress. Since that paper we've analysed many more samples, and have new findings to report. We will write a new paper at some point, but at best we'll be publishing a paper once a year. In the interim, we'd like to publish updates to the SNP catalog dataset, perhaps every 3 months or so. So for those "in between" datasets that do not accompany a full paper, how would you recommend that we publish them? Obviously we could put them on www.malariagen.net, and tell people to cite some www.malariagen.net URL. But I guess our concerns with this approach are that (a) our website is probably not a long-term archive, (b) we'd have to think about persistent URLs, and (c) the citation being just a URL would not get picked up by citation tracking services and so MalariaGEN wouldn't get any visible credit for anyone citing these data. I was hoping for some sort of data journal that allowed us to publish super-lightweight data papers that are basically an abstract, some metadata, and the dataset itself, and then gave us a DOI or some other persistent and trackable means of citation. But I couldn't find anything appropriate. Any thoughts? Cheers, Alistair [1] http://eorder.sheridan.com/3_0/display/index.php?flashprint=1866 [2] http://explorercat.sanger.ac.uk/ExplorerCat-pgv/pub/executePlugin.action?pluginName=PopGen+Explorer&selectedCatalogId=1 -- Alistair Miles Head of Epidemiological Informatics Centre for Genomics and Global Health <http://cggh.org> The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics Roosevelt Drive Oxford OX3 7BN United Kingdom Web: http://purl.org/net/aliman Email: [log in to unmask] Tel: +44 (0)1865 287538