ZB MED is now member of DataCite

The German National Library of Medicine (ZB MED) is an official member of DataCite since Friday, 5 February. Within this initiative it is working together with international partners to promote global access to research data.

Research data are the direct results of scientific activity and also the basis for further research. So far, however, their documentation and storage is insufficient. Therefore, many data sets are difficult to access, they can not be exchanged and re-used and thus are often repeatedly generated.

DataCite aims at facilitating the work with research data for the scientific community. To this end, the international initiative focuses on promoting the use of persistent identifiers in research and institutions of higher education. Specifically, its members enable this by the registration of Digital Object Identifiers (DOI). The long-term vision of the partnership is to ensure uniform global standards for research data. As an official DOI registration agency, DataCite will be a member of the International DOI Foundation (IDF).

DataCite was founded in December 2009 by the world's leading research libraries and technical information centers. Founding members are the British Library, the Technical Information Center of Denmark (DTIC), the TU Delft Library from the Netherlands, the National Research Council's Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI), the California Digital Library (University of California Curation Center), Purdue University (USA) and the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB). Other countries and organizations are welcome to join DataCite. The office is managed by the TIB in Hannover.

The ZB MED is the Federal Republic of Germany's central specialist library of medicine, health, nutrition, the environment, and agriculture. It is funded by the federal government and the federal states and is an independent, nonpartisan, public institution. Within the nearly 40 years of its existence it has become Europe's largest library for medicine, health, nutrition, environment and agriculture. In addition to its classical literature supply tasks, the ZB MED is committed in various projects for development, indexing, dissemination and publication of electronic literature, primary data and research findings. The ZB MED is a member of the Leibniz Association.

Contact:
German National Library of Medicine
ZB MED. Medicine. Health. Nutrition. Environment. Agriculture.
Ulrich Korwitz
Tel.: +49 (0) 221 478 7101
E-Mail: Korwitz@zbmed.de