What is a DOI?
A Digital Object Identifier provides easy access to specific data sets, providing others fast, efficient, and durable access to your data. Papers with links to data are cited more frequently and non-durable data links tend to fail over time.
You may have seen them used in links to scholarly journal articles and in the NASA Astrophysics Data System. DOIs create permanent and unique links to text, web pages, data and other digital resources.
How to get a MAST DOI
Help us provide a permanent reference to the data you used in writing your manuscript. There are two ways to add a MAST DOI:
1. Generate a DOI for a custom collection of one or more observations from Hubble, Kepler, GALEX, IUE, etc.
Use the the MAST DOI Portal to generate a DOI for one or more specific observations, images, spectra, or time-series data generated by one of our missions: HST, Kepler, FUSE, IUE, etc. If you wish to reference data from the Kepler/K2 mission in bulk, see below.
2. Find existing DOIs for catalogs and High Level Science Products such as Kepler/KIC, GALEX/MCAT, CANDELS, K2SFF, etc.
Data from a High-Level Science Product (CANDELS, K2SFF, etc.)
High Level Science Products are pre-processed community-provided datasets that already have DOI links. A pre-defined DOI can be found on the HLSP page next to the name of the product.
A catalog? (Kepler/KIC, GALEX/MCAT, etc.)
At present, we provide a DOI for each of the following MAST catalogs and surveys.
- GALEX/MCAT
- GALEX/gPhoton
- Hubble Source Catalog
- Kepler/KIC
- K2/EPIC
- Guide Star Catalog 2
- Digitized Sky Survey
An entire quarter or campaign from Kepler/K2 or an entire sector from TESS?
Data from the Kepler space telescope are often referred to in large collections, either by quarter, by cadence, or as a whole. Data from TESS is referred to by sector. Find the corresponding DOI for these data collections below.
Coming Soon
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FAQ
The MAST DOI Initiative is a system at MAST for assigning, preserving, and dereferencing DOIs for MAST data. It began with a partnership with American Astronomical Society Journals (The Astrophysical Journal, The Astronomical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal Supplements, and The Astrophysical Journal Letters) in which MAST and AAS Journals collaborated to bring MAST DOIs to AAS Journal articles. At present, only authors at STScI are being asked to provide DOIs to their MAST data in the publication process. In 2018, additional pilot institutions will be prompted to provide MAST DOIs during submission to AAS journals. Eventually, all authors will be asked to provide MAST DOIs on submission to AAS journals in the future.
Once your custom DOI has been created or you have selected a DOI for an existing data product or catalog, we recommend you add a statement similar to the examples below in the data, analysis, or acknowledgment section using the AASTeX \dataset markup. For AAS journal authors, we recommend updating to the most recent version of AASTeX (v6.2, https://journals.aas.org/authors/aastex.html). Where exactly you decide to cite the DOI will depend on your article. The important thing is to insert it so readers can access the data you analyzed:
Example 1: All the {\it HST}, {\it FUSE},{\it GALEX} data used in this paper can be found in MAST: \dataset[https://doi.org/10.17909/######]{https://doi.org/10.17909/######}.
Example 2: Some/all of the data presented in this paper were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute. The specific observations analyzed can be accessed via \dataset[https://doi.org/10.17909/######]{https://doi.org/10.17909/######}. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5–26555. Support to MAST for these data is provided by the NASA Office of Space Science via grant NAG5–7584 and by other grants and contracts.
The DOI citation can be included with your manuscript at the time of submission or amended to your text file during the revision process. More information about the AASTeX \dataset command can be found here: https://journals.aas.org/authors/aastex/aasguide.html#celestial_object.
Specific information about MAST's Data Use Policy is available at https://archive.stsci.edu/data_use.html.
While MAST does not have any explicit agreements in place with other publishers, you may use a MAST DOI in any way you see fit. We would be happy if you used it in any publication referencing MAST data.
High Level Science Products, entire catalogs (like the Hubble Source Catalog) and certain collections of data (specific subsets of Kepler and K2 data) have pre-assigned DOIs that can be found on the HLSP page or here, on the MAST DOI Home page. You can directly copy the DOIs provided for these data sets and insert them into your manuscript. When entering the url, be sure to use the standard DOI.org url prefix, e.g., https://doi.org/10.17909/######.
You may create more than one DOI for your manuscript. We suggest that you create DOIs for each dataset that is discussed independently in the manuscript. If data sets are analyzed in conjunction they should be put into the same DOI. We recommend that you not generate many DOIs with similar content; don't generate one for each target. If you discuss, for instance, FUSE and HST data that a reader would most likely want to access independently, you can create a separate DOI for each of them.
While MAST DOIs can be referenced by journals they are not kept track of like articles or other "first-class citable objects". Thus, MAST DOIs do not accrue citations in the same way articles do. MAST DOIs should be thought of more like "permanent URLs" than scholarly works.
DOIs can be edited with permission of MAST staff as well as permission from all publications that currently reference the DOI. It is the position of MAST and AAS Journals that the DOI should reference the data the author intended at the time of publication, rather than any data unintentionally referenced by clerical error. Contact us at archive@stsci.edu if edits are needed.