At the end of 2022, we conducted our annual member survey, asking our members about their experience being part of the DataCite community and how DataCite services might help with any challenges they are facing. We thank the many members who participated in the survey for sharing their valuable perspectives with us. After analyzing their insights, we are pleased to publish the following summary of the main outcomes.
General
Similar to previous years, approximately 25% of DataCite members responded to our request and participated in the survey. Respondents
- Came from all continents (except Antarctica),
- Mostly came from Europe, and
- In 75% of cases, represented research and academic institutions.
This year, 87.5% of our members gave a minimum rating of 8 out of 10 when asked if they’d recommend DataCite to other organizations. This meant that the overall average rating was higher than in 2020 (83,3%) and 2021 (84,7%).
When asked what we do well, the top three areas mentioned were:
- Community engagement
- DOI registration
- Providing support
We believe the development and execution of our communication and event strategies contributed to community engagement being mentioned frequently. We also received positive feedback from many participants on our efforts to make the metadata schema development process more open and transparent.
As for what we can do better, the top three areas are:
- Fabrica
- Documentation
- Statistics/metrics
The first of these is a reminder of the important role Fabrica plays for many of our members. This has been heard, and we hope that the latest release of Fabrica will address the needs of our users. In terms of enhancing our documentation, one of the goals of our annual vision for 2023 is the creation of a content strategy for documentation. Finally, with regards to metrics, we expect the Open Global Data Citation Corpus to transform the data citation landscape and address your metrics needs.
Product development
We also asked members about the top three services or features they look forward to in 2023 and these were:
- Bibliometrics dashboard
- FAIR visualizations
- Batch metadata update
For the first time, we also asked what challenges organizations are currently facing that DataCite services could help with. The three most common responses were:
- Citation metrics
- Batch DOI registration via API
- Relations to other resources and research outputs
Support and outreach
Similar to the general ratings (see above), members’ experiences of the DataCite helpdesk and our support pages improved compared to previous years, with median ratings of 9 and 8, respectively.
The top three topics for which respondents would like to see additional support documentation are:
- Metadata (schema)
- Beginners guide, providing basics
- APIs
We are already beginning to address the first of these by including a greater number of examples in DataCite Metadata Schema 4.5. In addition, we have updated the metadata schema pages to provide more information about the metadata schema and how to contribute towards its future development.
Finally, the top three topics respondents would like to learn more about in DataCite events and meetings are:
- Metadata
- Best practices
- APIs
These topics were the focus of last year’s DataCite Member Meeting and we are planning to intensify our efforts around member training, initially with the DataCite Open Training Days on 26–27 April 2023, where we will offer sessions on Metadata, Fabrica, and APIs.
We would again like to express our appreciation to all respondents of the survey for taking the time to tell us what they value and what we can improve. All responses are taken into account, and help us to enhance not only specific services and functionalities, but also the experience of being a part of a vibrant community that continues to grow in terms of geographic, disciplinary, and organizational diversity.
If you have any questions or ideas you would like to share with us, feel free to contact us at support@datacite.org
Rorie Edmunds
