DataCite Best Practice Guide

Bayer, Christiane; Frech, Andreas; Gabriel, Vanessa; Kümmet, Sonja; Lücke, Stephan; Meier, Laura; Munke, Johannes; Putnings, Markus; Rohrwild, Jürgen; Schulz, Julian; Spenger, Martin; Weber, Tobias

doi:10.5281/zenodo.15607293

Published June 6, 2025 | Version Version 4.0

Working paper Open

DataCite Best Practice Guide

1. IT-Gruppe Geisteswissenschaften (LMU)
2. Universitätsbibliothek der LMU München
3. VerbaAlpina, IT-Gruppe Geisteswissenschaften (LMU)
4. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
5. Leibniz Supercomputing Centre
6. Universitätsbibliothek der FAU
7. Max Weber Stiftung - Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland

This document is a guideline for the use of the official DataCite Metadata Schema documentation [external link], version 4.6 [external link]. A support documentation for more convenience and better navigation can be found here as a HTML version DataCite Metadata Schema Documentation [external link, different versions available]. It is meant for researchers, IT and library support staff. Further information on the schema can be found on the DataCite support site [external link].

The document was created with participation from the following institutions/projects:

IT-Gruppe Geisteswissenschaften (LMU)
Leibniz Supercomputing Centre
Max Weber Stiftung - Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland
Universitätsbibliothek der FAU
Universitätsbibliothek der LMU München
VerbaAlpina

This guide is designed to be reused by other institutions as well.

To create a DataCite XML file for the project you want to describe, we recommend to you to use the DataCite Metadata Generator [external link]. This tool is kept in sync with this guideline, safe for transmission times inbetween versions. If you want to create metadata for research data on a scale that is too large for manual procedures, please contact one of the institutions named above.

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