Publications

A publication is a citable release of your work — a dataset, a paper, a set of images, a piece of software. You assemble one from files you have already put in a project, a curator reviews it, and once it is approved the hub gives it a permanent page and a DOI so other people can cite it. Published work lives at /publications on the hub.

You publish when you need someone outside your team to be able to point at the exact thing you used. The soil lab from Projects has spent a year measuring nitrate in field samples; the paper is nearly written, and the journal wants the data available. The lab publishes the cleaned dataset from its project, gets back a DOI, and puts that DOI in the paper's data-availability statement. Anyone who follows it a decade later gets the same files the paper was written from.

That last part is the whole point, and it is what makes a publication different from everything else on the hub:

• A project is private and changes every day. A publication is public and frozen. Once a version is approved you cannot quietly edit it — you add a new version instead, and the old one stays reachable at its own DOI.
• A collection is a personal board of things you found interesting. It is not citable and nothing reviews it. See Collections.
• A resource page describes work. A publication is the work, with the files attached and an identifier on them.

Publishing is deliberate. Putting a file in a project does not publish it, and nothing publishes itself.

Finding a publication

The Publications home page lists Recent Publications and Popular Publications side by side, with a Browse Publications button at the top right. Each entry shows a thumbnail, the title, the publication date, the category, and the contributors.

Browse Publications is where you search. Type a word or phrase into Enter keyword or phrase and press Search. Narrow the results with the Category list — pick one and press Search again — or click a tag in the Popular Tags list beside the results. Tags stack: each one you add appears above the results with an x that removes it. Sort with Title, Published, and, where the hub shows rankings, Ranking.

Every publication has a permanent address you can share: https://<your hub>/publications/<id>. Adding a version number reaches one particular release, as in /publications/42/3.

Reading a publication

The top of a publication page carries the title, the authors, a short summary and the category it is listed in. To the right sits the download or launch button and, under it, the version and license lines. The version line reads something like Version 1.2 - published on 12 Mar 2026 and, where the work has a DOI, shows doi: followed by the identifier and a cite this link.

The About tab below holds the full description, the image gallery, the list of what is in the publication, any extra metadata the hub collects, the tags, and the release Notes for that version. Other tabs appear depending on what the hub has enabled for that category:

Tab	What it holds
Versions	Every release of this publication, with its DOI, so you can move between them.
Supporting Docs	Files that come with the work but are not the main content.
Citations	Works this publication references, and works that reference it.
Questions	Questions and answers about the publication.
Reviews	Star ratings and written reviews from members.
Usage	Download and view figures.
Forks	Copies other members have made of this work.
Wishlist	Requests for changes or additions.

Watch publication, in the sidebar, tells the hub to email you when a new version of that publication is released; the same button then reads Stop watching publication.

Downloading

The button at the top right of the page downloads the content. What it says depends on what is attached: Download for a single file, Download Bundle with the total size for several, View publication for a link, Go to data for a database. Where the files have been packaged, Show bundle contents lists what is inside, with the size and an MD5 checksum you can use to verify what you got.

Very large bundles are built in the background. The button then reads Download Bundle (preparing…) and starts the download by itself once the package is ready. If the dataset is too big to bundle at all, the button says Download Bundle (unavailable) and you download the files one at a time from the publication page instead.

Some publications are restricted. If the content needs an account you are told To access the content, you need to be logged in to the site; if it is limited to particular groups, Publication content is restricted to logged-in members of limited groups. A retired publication says We're sorry! The content of this version is unpublished and cannot be viewed, and following the DOI of a withdrawn dataset lands you on a Tombstone Dataset page that says why it was retracted.

Citing

Under Cite this work on the About tab the hub prints the citation in the form it wants you to use, with the DOI as a link. Two export links follow: BibTex and EndNote, each of which downloads a file you can import into a reference manager.

Publishing your own work

Everything up to here is about reading somebody else's publication. This is the part where you make one.

You need an account, and the hub must have publishing switched on. Most work starts in a project: go to your project, open Publications in its menu, and select Start a new publication. Working inside a project means your team-mates appear in the author picker, your files are already there, and related publications share a project page.

If you only want to release a few files and do not need a project, go to /publications, press Start publishing », and use the buttons under Want to publish file(s) quickly without starting a project? There is a way. The hub creates a hidden project for you behind the scenes. Some hubs turn this shortcut off, in which case only the project route is offered.

Either way you first answer What are you going to publish? and pick a type — File(s), Databases, Series and so on. The type decides which panels you are asked to fill in. It is set when the draft is created and nothing in the front end changes it afterwards, so read the descriptions before you choose. The soil lab picks File(s): a cleaned .csv, a data dictionary, and the script that produced them.

Working through the panels

A bar across the top of the draft shows every panel, and its colour tells you whether that panel is finished. Press Save & Continue to move on, or click any panel in the bar to jump to it. What you get depends on the type, but a file publication usually asks for:

1. Content — the files to publish. Add a file opens a selector over your project's files; tick what you want and press save selection. Files you have not uploaded yet can be uploaded from the same selector. Each item in the list has a Remove control that takes it back out of the publication. Types that accept several kinds of content give primary files, supporting documents and gallery images their own Add a file buttons.
2. Description — the title, a short abstract, and the full description.
3. Authors — Select author(s) lists your project team; Add an author looks up any hub member, or takes a name, organization and email for someone without an account. Drag the names to change their order.
4. Tags — words and phrases that describe the work, plus the category it belongs in.
5. License — Choose License picks one, and where the license demands it you tick a box agreeing to its terms. Some licenses let you edit the text.
6. Citations — related works. Paste a DOI and the hub fetches the citation for you; otherwise enter it by hand.
7. Notes — what changed in this version.

Review and submit

This is the last decision point. After this the draft leaves your hands.

The last panel is Review. It tells you whether the draft is complete — Your draft is complete and ready for submission — or what is still missing, and it collects the last few decisions:

• Preview publication page, which opens the page as it will look.
• Publishing settings: a Publication date. Leave it blank to publish as soon as it is approved, or set a future date to embargo the work.
• Point of Contact — one or more corresponding authors, which trusted repositories require.
• Publish or Post?, where the type allows a choice. Publish draft issues a DOI and freezes most of the record. Post draft issues no DOI, keeps the publication editable, and leaves the page out of search, reachable only by its direct link.
• Comments for the curator, and the Agreements box: I and all publication authors have read and agree to the hub's Terms of Deposit.

Press Submit draft.

What happens next is not up to you. On a hub that reviews submissions, the version goes to pending curator review, the curators are notified, and you wait. A curator reads every panel of your draft, marks each one as acceptable or as needing work, and then either approves the publication — which stamps the accepted date, freezes the record, and registers the DOI — or sends it back to you with an explanation of what has to change. Either way you get an email. Curation describes both sides of that exchange, and what to do when a draft comes back.

On a hub that does not review submissions, the version publishes the moment you press the button. Auto-approval is a hub-wide option and can also be set per publication type or for named members, and the hub's shipped configuration turns it on. Where it is on, the review panel offers the tick box I would like for this publication to be reviewed instead of automatically being published, and that box is the only way to ask for a curator. If you are not sure which kind of hub you are on, look at the version's status straight after submitting: pending curator review means somebody is reading it, published means nobody will.

Once a version is published you cannot change most of it — that is what the DOI guarantees. To correct or extend the work, start a new version from the Versions panel; it keeps the same publication page and adds a new release with its own DOI.

Forking

Where the hub allows it and the license permits derivatives, the Forks tab offers Fork Publication. Forking copies the files, authors, tags and citations into a draft of your own — either in a project you already have or in a new one — so you can build on the work and publish the result. The fork records where it came from, and the original's page lists it. The Diff button on the Forks tab compares two versions side by side, section by section.

Curation

Curation exists because a DOI is a promise. Once a version is approved its files and its metadata stop changing, and a paper somewhere can cite them, so somebody looks at the draft before that becomes true. A curator checks that the files are the ones the description says they are, that the authors are right, that the licence permits what it claims to permit, and that a stranger could work out what the data means. That is a different job from peer review: a curator is not judging whether the science is good.

Curation is the review a publication goes through between the moment its authors submit it and the moment it goes live. A curator reads every part of the draft, marks each one as acceptable or as needing work, and either approves the publication or sends it back. This chapter covers both sides: reviewing as a curator, and answering a review as an author. Submitting a draft in the first place is covered in Publishing your own work above.

Who can curate

Curation is open to members of the hub's curators group and to site administrators. Where a publication type names a curators group of its own, its members see only publications of that type. Anyone else can still be assigned to a single publication, and then sees only that one.

You have to be logged in. Visiting the curation pages as a guest gives you Please login to access publication curation; a logged-in member with no curation rights gets We are sorry. You are not authorized for publication curation.

The curation list

Go to /publications/curation. The page opens with Below is a list of publications you are authorized to curate. and two filters, All and Assigned to me.

The table lists every submission waiting on someone, with columns ID, a thumbnail, Title, the version label, Content (the publication type), Submitted, and Status. Click any heading to sort by it; the default is newest submission first. Status is either pending curator review or pending author changes, and the submitted column says Submitted or Re-submitted, with the date and the name of the person who sent it.

Each row ends with up to three controls:

Control	What it does
Assign	Opens Assign a Curator. Type a name and pick the member from the drop-down, then Save. Once someone is assigned the cell reads Assigned to ; clicking the name reopens the box to Change assignment.
Review	Opens the review screen. It appears only while the publication is pending curator review.
History	Opens Curation History, a dated log of every review action and author reply, each entry marked curator or author.

A small icon beside those opens the publication's public page in a new view.

Reviewing a publication

The review screen shows the publication's type, title and version, when it was submitted and by whom, who it is assigned to, and any Submitter comment(s) the authors left. Under that: Review all items below and check them off as complete or requiring changes.

Each part of the draft — content, description, authors, license, tags, citations, notes — appears as its own block, with the curator instructions the administrator wrote for that block beside it, and a checker with four states:

State	Meaning
not reviewed yet	You have not judged this item.
looks good	You have accepted it.
changes required	You have asked for a change.
item updated, needs review	The authors changed it after your review; look again.

Choose looks good to accept an item. Choose changes required and a Request changes box opens: Explain to authors what needs to change. Write the explanation and press Request changes. Where the authors have already answered an earlier request, their reply appears on the item as Author comment:, and an item they were let off shows Requirement skipped.

Two buttons at the top act on the whole submission:

• Approve publication publishes the version. The hub stamps the accepted date, freezes the type's manifest onto the version so the record cannot drift, updates or registers the DOI with the identifier service, adds the publication to the authors' ORCID records where they have connected one, and — where the hub archives to a trusted repository and no grace period is set — copies the version into archival storage. You get Publication has been approved to be published, and the authors are emailed Your publication has been approved. You can view it live at …
• Kick back to authors sets the version to pending author changes and returns it to them. You get Publication sent back to authors for changes, and they are emailed Administrator has reviewed your submitted publication and requested changes.

Answering a review as an author

When a publication comes back, its version status is Changes required. Open it from the project's Publications area, or follow the link in the email, and press Make changes.

The panel bar shows which parts need work. Open one and you see the curator's explanation. You have two ways to clear it:

• Make the change the curator asked for.
• Press Dispute this under Don't agree with curator? This opens Dispute curator's request for changes, where you explain why you do not wish to make the change. Where the curator asked you to meet a requirement you cannot, Request to skip requirement does the same thing for that.

Every flagged item has to be either changed or disputed before you can re-submit. Once they all are, OK to submit appears in the version bar. Follow it to the review panel, check the publishing settings and the Terms of Deposit box again, and press Re-submit draft to be published.

The publication goes back to pending curator review, marked as re-submitted, and the curator sees which items you changed and which you disputed. Your changes and their comments both land in the History, so either side can read the whole exchange later.

Skipping review

Some hubs approve submissions automatically, and the shipped configuration does exactly that. Auto-approval can be set three ways: hub-wide in the component's options, per publication type in that type's curation settings, and for named members whose submissions never wait. Where any of them applies, pressing Submit draft publishes the version there and then — accepted date stamped, DOI registered where the hub issues them, no curator involved.

The review panel offers the tick box I would like for this publication to be reviewed instead of automatically being published, so you can ask for a curator anyway. On a hub that auto-approves, that box is the difference between someone checking your dataset and nobody checking it. Tick it for anything you would be embarrassed to have frozen.