Are data papers cited as research data? Preliminary analysis on interdisciplinary data paper citations

Introduction. Research data sharing and reuse have become increasingly important in modern science, and data papers represent a new academic publication genre aimed at enhancing the visibility, sharing, and reuse of research data. However, whether citations to data papers reflect actual data reuse remains largely unexplored. This paper presents preliminary findings from a project designed to address this gap. Method. we conducted a content analysis to manually annotate 437 citation sentences from 309 research articles referencing 50 data papers published in Data in Brief, a chief academic journal that only publishes data papers. The data papers were sampled from five knowledge domains based on a paper-level classification system. Results. Our results show that most citations to all selected data papers (89%) are unrelated to the research data being described in the paper, instead focusing on the research findings or methodologies. This suggests that data papers are being cited similarly to traditional research articles, despite their unique purpose and content. Conclusion. These findings raise questions about the effectiveness of data papers as representations of research data within the scholarly communication system, as well as their utility in quantitative studies on data reuse.