Skip to main content
v2026.11,772 entries · CC-BY 4.0
Dictionary termTrack BProposedv2026.2

Data publication platform

A platform that supports the publication of research data as a citable artefact — assigning a persistent identifier, presenting a landing page, and applying review, curation, or peer-review processes — distinct from purely depositional storage.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board
· Last updated 23 Aug 2026
Share this

Ask CASRAI · included with Regulatory Radar

Ask about Data publication platform

Ask CASRAI answers research-administration questions and cites the passages behind every claim — and says so when the corpus does not cover something, instead of guessing. It comes with a Regulatory Radar subscription at $29 a month, alongside the daily digest of regulatory changes and the dashboard of what changed.

150 questions a day, on this site, over the API, or inside your own tools through the CASRAI MCP server.

Everything CASRAI publishes — this page, the dictionary, the guides and the news — stays free to read, with no account and no card.

Examples

Worked examples

  • Is an instance

    A study depositing its dataset in Dryad (curation-reviewed, journal-linked) and its associated software separately in Zenodo (no curation review) — using two different platforms for two artefact types.

Editorial commentary

Data publication platforms include data journals (Scientific Data, Earth System Science Data, Data in Brief), peer-review-enabled repositories (Dryad with its journal partnerships), and curation-heavy thematic platforms (PANGAEA). The defining feature is treatment of the dataset as a publishable object: it is given a citation form, a landing page with structured metadata, often a CC0 or CC-BY licence, and (in the data-journal case) a published data descriptor article. Data publication is a recognised research output and contributes to attribution and credit.

How this differs from a repository

A repository stores and provides access to a dataset; a data publication platform adds a publication layer on top — curation review, a formal citation, and often a data-descriptor article — that a bare deposit does not have. In practice the distinction is a spectrum rather than a hard line: Zenodo and Figshare are primarily deposit-and-cite repositories with no mandatory curation review, Dryad adds a curation-review step tied to journal submission, and a data journal adds a full peer-reviewed descriptor article on top of that. This page is the umbrella concept — use it to route to the specific platform whose governance and review model fits a given need, rather than treating any one of them as definitive.

Worked example

A researcher submitting a manuscript to a journal that mandates data availability might deposit the underlying dataset in Dryad (curation-reviewed, journal-linked), while depositing an associated software tool separately in Zenodo (no curation review, broader scope) — a single study routinely uses more than one data publication/repository platform for different artefact types.

Related pages

See also Dryad, Zenodo, Figshare, generalist repository, domain repository, and trusted digital repository.

References

  • Costello M.J., ‘Motivating online publication of data’, BioScience 59(5), 2009.
  • Lawrence B., Jones C. et al., ‘Citation and peer review of data: Moving towards formal data publication’, International Journal of Digital Curation 6(2), 2011.

Also known as

Data journal · Curated data publication venue

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element
xml
<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Data publication platform"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/data-publication-platform" />
Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)
json
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/data-publication-platform",
  "name": "Data publication platform",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/data-publication-platform",
  "description": "A platform that supports the publication of research data as a citable artefact — assigning a persistent identifier, presenting a landing page, and applying review, curation, or peer-review processes — distinct from purely depositional storage.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/data-infrastructure#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/data-publication-platform",
  "sameAs": [
    "Data journal",
    "Curated data publication venue"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "author": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
  },
  "datePublished": "2026-05-21T02:19:59",
  "dateModified": "2026-08-23T05:20:11",
  "inLanguage": "en-GB",
  "isAccessibleForFree": true
}

Referenced across the research world

University of Cambridge logoColumbia University logoCrossref logoUniversity of Edinburgh logoHarvard University logoUniversity of Oxford logoPrinceton University logoStanford School of Medicine logoUniversity College London logoORCID logoUniversity of Cambridge logoColumbia University logoCrossref logoUniversity of Edinburgh logoHarvard University logoUniversity of Oxford logoPrinceton University logoStanford School of Medicine logoUniversity College London logoORCID logo
  • University of Cambridge logo
  • Columbia University logo
  • Crossref logo
  • University of Edinburgh logo
  • Harvard University logo
  • University of Oxford logo
  • Princeton University logo
  • Stanford School of Medicine logo
  • University College London logo
  • ORCID logo

View CASRAI adoption →

Regulatory Radar

Stop finding out after the fact

$29/month, cancel anytime. Daily digest updates from our analysis, a dashboard holding the same items, and a cited assistant for everything they raise.

  • Federal Register, Federal Register+, Grants.gov, Regulations.gov, NSF News, UKRI, plus CASRAI’s own published content.
  • 72,264 indexed passages, and every answer cites the ones it drew on.