Dataset Landing Page, Explained

Dataset landing page

The human-readable web page that a dataset's persistent identifier (typically a DataCite DOI) resolves to, presenting the dataset's title, creators, description, identifiers, dates, version history, related works, access conditions, and a link to download or request the data.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 22 Aug 2026

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Dataset landing pages are the functional equivalent of journal article landing pages for data. They are the user-facing layer of the persistent identifier: when a DOI is clicked, the resolved page is the landing page. Best-practice landing pages embed schema.org Dataset markup so the page is machine-readable by Google Dataset Search and similar services. They also typically link to the dataset’s machine-readable metadata in multiple formats (DataCite XML, JSON-LD, CSL JSON). For withdrawn datasets, the landing page becomes a tombstone (see DOI tombstone).

What schema.org/Dataset markup should cover

For a landing page to be reliably picked up by Google Dataset Search and similar discovery tools, its embedded schema.org Dataset JSON-LD should populate at minimum: name, description, identifier (the DOI itself), creator (ideally with each creator’s ORCID iD as a nested sameAs or identifier), datePublished, license, and distribution (pointing to the actual downloadable file or access mechanism). Repository platforms like Dryad and Zenodo generate this markup automatically from the deposit metadata, which is one reason depositing through a repository — rather than hosting a dataset ad hoc — produces a more discoverable landing page.

Machine-readable exports alongside the human page

A well-built landing page exposes the same metadata in multiple machine formats for different consumers: DataCite’s own XML/JSON schema for PID-graph and registry harvesting, JSON-LD (often reusing the same schema.org Dataset markup) for search engines, and CSL JSON or BibTeX for reference-manager import. This multi-format exposure is what lets one landing page simultaneously serve a human reader, a citation manager, and an automated harvester.

References

Starr J. et al., ‘Achieving human and machine accessibility of cited data in scholarly publications’, PeerJ Computer Science 1, 2015.

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Dataset landing page"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dataset-landing-page" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dataset-landing-page",
  "name": "Dataset landing page",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dataset-landing-page",
  "description": "The human-readable web page that a dataset's persistent identifier (typically a DataCite DOI) resolves to, presenting the dataset's title, creators, description, identifiers, dates, version history, related works, access conditions, and a link to download or request the data.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/data-infrastructure#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dataset-landing-page",
  "sameAs": [
    "Landing page (dataset)"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-08-22T15:38:26",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}