Session summary: The RDAP12 data citation panel practitioners

The data citation panel of the March 2012 Research Data Access and Preservation (RDAP) Summit targeted an issue that has eluded agreement. The practice of data citation has ranged from general acknowledgements to citing papers describing data to specifically citing the original data. A task group on data citation standards and practices, under the aegis of the International Council for Science, organized a workshop and report and will deliver the results of a survey on current practices. The group's forthcoming white paper will examine emerging proposals for standardization and best practices, tools and infrastructure to support data citation, challenges and opportunities. While panelists and attendees acknowledged the difficulty of standardization at an international level, the emergence of DataCite and ORCID for citing data and authors, respectively, are positive signs.