Citation metrics for Open Government Geospatial Datasets

This presentation describes the development of methods and instructions for government open data providers to find citation metrics for their provided datasets. Some example citation metrics will be presented for GIS datasets found in MI and the BTAA Geoportal, and the portal will be briefly introduced.

The BTAA Geoportal (run by the Big Ten Academic Alliance Geospatial Information Network) is hoping to expand into holding some government datasets for longitudinal availability and preservation, as most government agencies replace older datasets with new ones and then remove the older datasets from places of public access. It is hoped that by letting government agencies understand where and how people are using their data through citations may encourage them to allow the BTAA Geoportal Project to do this.

Government agencies are often reluctant to or hold ambivalence about offering GIS datasets to the public, and they may be especially reluctant to allow researchers to access the underlying data for public presented web maps. Helping government data creators understand the broader impacts of their offerings could encourage more sharing of data in ways that are accessible for researchers and metrics might also be useful to justify funding for data provision to elected officials.