JEK-III
commented
10 years ago Data papers are predated by an approach that Lawrence et al. calls \emph{data publication by proxy}, in which a paper providing a general description of a database or dataset serves as a citable proxy\cite{lawrence_data_2013}. Proxy publications are distinguished from data papers in that they may contain analysis or conclusions drawn from the dataset and they need not contain all of the information needed to use the data. In one example, the \href{http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/}{Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia} prefers that dataset users cite papers associated with a dataset insead of the data itself. Or in the biosciences, \emph{Nucleic Acids Research (NAR)} annualy publishes a massive issue devoted to such articles; the 2014 database issue featured 58 papers describing new databases and 123 updates on existing resources\cite{fernandez-suarez_2014_2014}. Participating databases then typcially ask users to cite their most recent \emph{NAR} paper. Citation of proxy publications or data papers is an effective mechanism for awarding scholarly credit, but it fails to satisfy many of the requirements of data citation that will be discussed shortly, so it should be supplemented with direct citation of the data.
In the discussion of “Data independent of any paper” it is worth noting that there may often be linkages between these data and myriad papers. Indeed a looser concept of a data paper has existed for some time, where researchers request a citation to a paper even though it is not the data nor fully describes the data (e.g the CRU temp records)