DataCite Service Provider

The Natural History Museum Data Portal uses DataCite to mint Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for each dataset created on the site. This ensures there is a persistent identifier which can be used to cite and reference each specific dataset.

The mechanism for minting and updating these DOIs is provided through an extension we develop and maintain to the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) software. This extension is called ckanext-doi and is open sourced under the GPL-3.0 license with the source code available on GitHub.

As part of our commitment to open source software as well as promoting the use of persistent identifiers, we have joined the DataCite Service Providers program. You can find out more about the program and the other service providers on the DataCite website.

If you are using CKAN and would like to integrate with DataCite, the ckanext-doi extension is the recommended way to do this.

More information about how to set the extension up is available in the documentation.

If you have any questions or issues, or would like to contribute new features to the extension, please create an issue in our GitHub repository.