GFZ Data Services

About GFZ Data Services

Since 2004, the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences assigns Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) to datasets. These datasets are archived by and published through GFZ Data Services and cover all geoscientific disciplines. They range from large dynamic datasets deriving from data intensive global monitoring networks with real-time data acquisition to the full suite of highly variable datasets collected by individual researchers or small teams. These highly variable data (‘long-tail data’) are small in size, but represent an important part of the total scientific output.

Terms of Use

Although efforts are made to ensure the quality of the data and metadata, we cannot guarantee that they contain no errors. Therefore, the data available via GFZ Data Services are provided without a warranty of any kind.

All data and software are provided with a licence that is indicated on the DOI Landing Pages. Generally we recommend the use open international licences (Creative Commons for data, Open Source licences for software). Metadata are in the public domain.

To recognise the important role of the data providers, data users should formally recognise data providers, contributors and sources by citing them appropriately. Data with assigned DOI are citable as any other scientific article. The recommended citation for each dataset follows the recommendations of DataCite and is given in the top section of the DOI Landing Pages.

Publishing data with GFZ Data Services

The data repository of GFZ Data Services makes data citable by assigning DOIs to datasets. To foster reuse, emphasis is placed on cross referencing scholarly publications describing the full provenance of a dataset (methods, parameters and how the data were created) with the published datasets. We recommend three different formats for data descriptions:

  • Journal Articles - the dataset is ‘supplementary material’ to an article
  • Articles in Data Journals - the dataset is associated to a data article
  • Data Reports - the dataset is published standalone with a data report

In 2011, GFZ complemented its traditional Scientific Technical Report STR series with a report series specifically dedicated to the description of datasets. The GFZ data reports have standardized discipline-specific templates, are internally reviewed and offer a full and consistent overview and description of all relevant parameters of a published dataset.

Can I publish data with GFZ Data Services?

GFZ Data Services publishes Earth Science data of GFZ members and collaboration partners.

Additionaly, GFZ Data Services provides data publishing services for the broader geoscientific community in Germany via Fachinformationsdienst der Geowissenschaften der Festen Erde (FID GEO) (http://www.fidgeo.de).

Publishing step by step

Contact us:

GFZ Data Services
Kirsten Elger (Repository Manager)
Damian Ulbricht
Roland Bertelmann