Publications

FAIR guidance

Throughout this documentation, you'll find explanations of why particular metadata are important and how they support the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability (FAIR) of your resource.

FAIRsharing helps resource providers describe their standards, databases and policies using rich, structured metadata that supports discovery, understanding and reuse by both people and software. These guidance notes explain why each field matters and how it contributes to making your resource more FAIR-enabling.

To learn more about FAIRsharing's approach to FAIR, see Alignment with FAIR.

Why is this important?

Publications provide evidence for the development, use and impact of your resource. They help users understand its scientific context, learn about its intended use and identify key references to cite when using or describing your resource.

FAIR: Supports Reusability by providing provenance and contextual information that helps users understand, evaluate and appropriately reference your resource.

Publications are recommended for all FAIRsharing records.

Please also see the general information regarding our minimal curation requirements.

Publications can be added either by importing from a DOI or PubMed identifier or manually.

What Publications should I add?

This publication section is only for publications that describe your resource. These are specifically those publications that you would ask others to use when citing your database, standard or policy. This section should not be used for other types of publications such as those describing the contents of a database, or the implementers of a standard.

Adding a publication via import from DOI or PubMed identifier

Open the edit interface for your record. Then, choose the "Publications" tab. You will see a set of cards summarising those publications that are already associated with your record. To add a new publication by automatically importing its metadata, provide either the DOI or the PubMed identifier in the search bar that says "Search existing publications". This will search FAIRsharing for a publication matching yours that already exists within our registry. If you find your publication in that list, click on the tickbox next to the publication to add it to your record. Then click either "Save and Continue" to continue editing your record, or "Save and Exit" to return to the record display.

An example of adding a publication already stored within FAIRsharing to a record (https://doi.org/10.25504/FAIRsharing.2abjs5). Note that, after adding the publication, this user has chosen to mark this as the publication for citing this resource.

If your publication is not yet in FAIRsharing and you have provided either a DOI or a PubMed identifier in the search box, click on "Import from DOI" or "Import from PubMed ID" to pull the publication metadata from that source. Then click either "Save and Continue" to continue editing your record, or "Save and Exit" to return to the record display.

Note that preprints are considered as publications.

An example of adding a publication to a record that is not yet stored on FAIRsharing. Note that, if necessary, you can modify the metadata before saving the publication, as shown in this update to the UniProtKB record (https://doi.org/10.25504/FAIRsharing.s1ne3g) which had incomplete authorship information.

Citing your resource

You may have one or more publications that should be used to cite your resource. Note this using the 'Cite record using this publication?' toggle in a publication. You may select one or more publication in this way.