Data paper

Describe and share your {meta}data

October 2026

Olivier Norvez

Sophie Pamerlon

Animation coordinator
@DataTerra  
@PNDB  
@THEIA  

Data engineer
@GBIF-France  

Data lifecycle

Data lifecycle

Table of contents

Table of contents









Context and issues



Description



Process



Resources

Context and issues

Context and issues

  • Heterogeneity (data types, origin, standards) & diversity of “objects” to be linked together1
  • Loss of information over time2
  • Toward a better open science and reproducibility 3, 4

Description

Description

A data paper is a scientific publication that precisely describes a data set, and informs the scientific community of its existence, its methods and its potential for reuse1

Sections

A scientific publication whose primary purpose is to describe a data set or group of data sets, rather than to report a research investigation.


  • DOI: for indexing and citation. Data Papers are indexed by Web of Science, PubMedCentral, Scopus, Google Scholar, Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ), etc..

  • Title: promotion and publicizing data

  • Authors: acknowledgement and credit for data publishers through scientific publication

  • Abstract: description of data in a structured, human-readable form

  • Other sections : material and methods, taxonomic coverage, geographic coverage, descriptive statistics, etc.

Fields


Research

Le Bras et al. (2017)

Policies

Lepareur et al. (2022)

Citizen science

Coché et al. (2021)

Statistics and figures

Adding statistical analyses or graphical representations is possible and recommanded

Migeon (2015)

Integrated Publishing Toolkit - IPT


The IPT, developed by the GBIF:

  • is a free open-source software

  • is used by organizations around the world to create and manage repositories for sharing biodiversity datasets

  • facilitates the filling of metadata and the automated production of a Data Paper

Standardization


Standardization

Process

A good level of FAIRness

  • Open data (CC-BY 4.0 compatible with Etalab)
  • Mandatory license
  • Direct link to download raw datasets
  • Thematic scope (All biodiversity including paleo- and archaeo-biodiversity)
  • Geographic scope (Data produced by France)
  • Temporal coverage (at least one data acquisition date)
  • Abstract
  • Title, authors and contacts
  • Acquisition framework (at least via a text field)
  • DOI / unique identifiers
  • taxonomic coverage (if taxa are present)
  • keywords related to the Thesaurus
  • Data attributes (Dictionary of data attributes with units and descriptions)
  • Semantic annotation (Keywords and attribute names, unlimited usable resources)

Pipeline

Resources

Resources

DataSHARE  

by the CEntre for the Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity (CESAB) - French Foundation for Biodiversity Research (FRB).

Accelerate the sharing of open-access and large scale ‘novel’ biodiversity related datasets.


OpenMetaPaper  

by the French Biodiversity data hub (PNBD - Data Terra) and the French nodal point of the GBIF

Increase the opening of research data around the use of the EML standard and its links with other data and metadata standards in ecology

List of journals









  List of journals accepting data paper: GBIF.org

DAFNEE database

Resources