Imperial College London

Henry Rzepa

In 2016, the world heard that gravitational waves had been detected
and now a third instance is reported.^‡^ Given that the data associated
with these detections are perhaps amongst the most important instances
in recent times, I thought I might take a peek at how it was managed.

1.  The original report in
    2016\[cite\]10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102\[/cite\] cited (Ref 116)
    data as DOI: [10.7935/K5MW2F23](https://doi.org/10.7935/K5MW2F23).
2.  The second instance\[cite\]10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.241103\[/cite\]
    also cites (Ref 89) a
    DOI: [10.7935/K5H41PBP](https://doi.org/10.7935/K5H41PBP)
3.  Today^†^ a third instance was
    reported\[cite\]10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.221101\[/cite\] with data
    cited (Ref 180) as DOI:
    [10.7935/K53X84K2](https://doi.org/10.7935/K53X84K2)
4.  Sixth instance in
    2017\[cite\]10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.161101\[/cite\], Data (Ref 80)
    DOI: [10.7935/K5B8566F](https://doi.org/10.7935/K5B8566F).
5.  A complete list of events is available
    at [losc.ligo.org/events/](https://losc.ligo.org/events/)

Each of these datasets is beautifully presented, with
[interactive](http://www.ch.imperial.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/?p=18365)
components making the data very accessible and indeed FAIR. Recently,
[guidelines](https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/) for how to cite data have
emerged and the FORCE11 organisation has interpreted them for
[authors](http://force11.github.io/data-citation-primer/authors/),
[publishers and journal
editors](http://force11.github.io/data-citation-primer/publishers-editors/),
and [repository
administrators](http://force11.github.io/data-citation-primer/repositories/) and
it is good that the data for these detections has adhered to these
principles. When implemented, it will identify e.g. Refs 116, 89 or 180
in the above articles with attributes that will trigger something called
[EventData](https://www.crossref.org/services/event-data/) with the
objective that it *retrieves and exposes the activity that occurs around
research data objects and brings to light links between publications and
data, citations, software, reuse, documentation, etc.* At the moment I
presume that these three data citations do not yet trigger any
EventData. However, there are plans to for both CrossRef and DataCite to
implement search procedures to find such EventData. When this service
goes live, I intend to explore its potential; watch this space.

I did one other check on each of the datasets:

- [<https://data.datacite.org/application/vnd.datacite.datacite+xml/10.7935/K5MW2F23>]{.small}
- [<https://data.datacite.org/application/vnd.datacite.datacite+xml/10.7935/K5H41PBP>]{.small}
- [<https://data.datacite.org/application/vnd.datacite.datacite+xml/10.7935/K53X84K2>]{.small}

These download the metadata associated with each dataset. Ideally this
could contain a host of information about the data and in particular its
creators (*i.e.* the ORCID of each of the many authors describing how
the data was acquired and interpreted). I show just the last as an
example **in full** (the others are similar). Its pretty minimal.

![](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/117-1024x584.jpg){.aligncenter
.size-large .wp-image-18476 loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="450"
height="257"
srcset="https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/117-1024x584.jpg 1024w, https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/117-300x171.jpg 300w, https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/117-768x438.jpg 768w, https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/117.jpg 1102w"
sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px"}

Now there is an area that this otherwise magnificent example of open
data sharing could improve upon. In a forthcoming post, I will show how
rich metadata population of a chemistry dataset can be used to enhance
it and also to trigger EventData as noted above.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

^‡^For a famous chemical controversy involving gravitational fields, see
[here](http://www.ch.imperial.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/?p=2857).

::: {.wp_orcid_field}
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In 2016, the world heard that gravitational waves had been detected and now a third instance is reported.
<sup>
 ‡
</sup>
Given that the data associated with these detections are perhaps amongst the most important instances in recent times, I thought I might take a peek at how it was managed. The original report in 2016[cite]10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102[/cite] cited (Ref 116) data as DOI: 10.7935/K5MW2F23.

Messages de Rogue Scholar

FAIR Research data: Gravitational waves as an example from the astrophysics community.