Data for: Sustainable connectivity in a community repository

Identifiers of many kinds are the key to creating unambiguous and
persistent connections between research objects and other items in the
global research infrastructure (GRI). Many repositories are implementing
mechanisms to collect and integrate these identifiers into their
submission and record curation processes. This bodes well for a
well-connected future, but many existing resources submitted in the past
are missing these identifiers, thus missing the connections required for
inclusion in the connected infrastructure. Re-curation of these metadata
is required to make these connections. The Dryad Data Repository has
existed since 2008 and has successfully re-curated the repository metadata
several times, adding identifiers for research organizations, funders, and
researchers. Understanding and quantifying these successes depends on
measuring repository and identifier connectivity. Metrics are described
and applied to the entire repository here. Identifiers for papers (DOIs)
connected to datasets in Dryad have long been a critical part of the Dryad
metadata creation and curation processes. Since 2019, the % of datasets
with connected papers has decreased from 100% to less than 40%. This
decrease has significant ramifications for the re-curation efforts
described above as connected papers are an important source of metadata.
In addition, missing connections to papers make understanding and re-using
datasets more difficult. Connections between datasets and papers are many
times difficult to make because of time lags between submission and
publication, lack of clear mechanisms for citing datasets and other
research objects from papers, changing focus of researchers, and other
obstacles. The Dryad community of members, i.e. users, research
institutions, publishers, and funders have vested interests in identifying
these connections and critical roles in the curation and re-curation
efforts. Their engagement will be critical in building on the successes
Dryad has already achieved and ensuring sustainable connectivity in the
future.