The substantive work of preparing, documenting, depositing, and maintaining a research dataset in a FAIR-aligned open repository under a permissive licence, distinct from the original data collection.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A researcher who spent six months cleaning and documenting a 50-GB dataset for Dryad deposit with a DataCite DOI

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
Uploading an undocumented zip to a personal Dropbox is not an open-data contribution in the FAIR sense

Editorial commentary

Open-data work includes metadata curation, format conversion, README authoring, schema design, deposit, and ongoing maintenance — labour that is often invisible in traditional credit systems. Increasingly recognised through DataCite DOIs, data citations, and CRediT-extension fields.

References

Wilkinson et al. 2016 Scientific Data (FAIR Principles)
FORCE11 Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles (2014)

Also known as

Data curation contribution · Data stewardship contribution

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Open-data contribution"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-data-contribution" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-data-contribution",
  "name": "Open-data contribution",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-data-contribution",
  "description": "The substantive work of preparing, documenting, depositing, and maintaining a research dataset in a FAIR-aligned open repository under a permissive licence, distinct from the original data collection.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/credit-extensions#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-data-contribution",
  "sameAs": [
    "Data curation contribution",
    "Data stewardship contribution"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T01:58:56",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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