What is a DOI?

A Digital Object Identifier provides easy access to specific data sets, providing readers with 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.

DOI Workflow - Paper to MAST Archive

How to get a MAST DOI

Help us provide a permanent reference to the data you used in writing your manuscript!

Step 1: Generate a new DOI or select an existing one.

Step 2: Add the DOI to your manuscript.

Step 3: Enter the DOI during article submission (for AAS Journals).

Step 1: Generate a new DOI or select an existing one

There are two ways to get a MAST DOI:

(a) Generate a DOI for a custom collection of one or more observations
Use the MAST DOI Portal to generate a DOI for one or more datasets including images, spectra, or time-series data generated by one of our missions (JWST, Hubble, Kepler, GALEX, IUE, etc.). See the MAST Docs webpage for instructions on DOI creation ("Create a DOI") or our video tutorial.
 
There is a limit to the number of observations (~10,000) that can be included in a user-generated custom DOI. To reference data in bulk, including large datasets from catalogs, High Level Science Products, or the Kepler/K2 or TESS missions, see option (b) below.

Button link to captioned video tutorial.

(b) Find existing DOIs

We have pre-made DOIs for certain collections, including High Level Science Products, certain catalogs, and various subsets of Kepler/K2 and TESS bulk mission data. If the DOI you want is not on this list and the dataset is too large to create a DOI yourself, please contact us to request a new bulk DOI.

Data from a High Level Science Product? (CANDELS, K2SFF, QLP, TASOC, etc.)

High Level Science Products (HLSPs) are pre-processed, community-provided datasets that already have DOI links.  A pre-defined DOI can be found on the HLSP search page above the name of each HSLP project, and in the top section of each HLSP's landing page. This DOI refers to a given HLSP as a whole.

Note: A separate DOI link is occasionally available on an HLSP project's landing page under "Source Data". This additional DOI refers to the original mission products from which the HLSP was derived, rather than to the HLSP products themselves.

A catalog? (Kepler KIC, GALEX MCAT, etc.)

At present, we provide a DOI for each of the following MAST catalogs and surveys.

A quarter or campaign from Kepler/K2 or a sector from TESS?

Data from the Kepler space telescope is 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.

 

Accordion

Step 2: Add the DOI to your manuscript

It is critical that you cite your MAST DOI in your manuscript; otherwise, your reader will have no link between your publication and the data you analyzed.

For AAS journal authors, we recommend updating to the most recent version of AASTeX. Where exactly you decide to cite the DOI will depend on your article. The important thing is to include it somewhere, so that readers can access the data you analyzed. For further information and examples for non-AAS journals, visit the FAQ at the end of this page.

Example 1 (Data Analysis section):
All the [mission] data used in this paper can be found in MAST: \dataset[https://doi.org/10.17909/######]{https://doi.org/10.17909/######}.

Example 2 (Acknowledgments):
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.

Step 3: Enter the DOI during article submission

Some journals, such as AAS journals, will require you to enter data DOIs in their journal submission interface during the article submission process. Other journals may instead recommend only that you insert your DOI in the manuscript using the \dataset or similar tag in their markup language, as outlined in Step 2 above.

Below is an example from the EJournal Press interface for AAS Journals:

"Insert DOI here" screenshot.

FAQ

Accordion

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