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This week marks another success for the fledgling practice of data citation, with two datasets from our GigaScience database published in Nature Biotechnology . The genomes sequenced by our colleagues at the BGI for the Cynomolgus and Chinese rhesus macaques were initially released DOIs at our launch in July, and were amongst the first (at the time) unpublished genomes released in this way.

Many people will be familiar with Tim Berners-Lee’s five stars of linked data, categorising the publication of data on the web in levels of increasing usefulness.

Working at a data center as big as the BGI, and launching a journal focused on maximizing data use, we have followed the many calls over the years for improved incentives and methods to aid and reward scientists in spending the considerable time and effort to share their data.