In recent years, researchers, librarians, publishers and funding bodies have come to realise the importance and potential of using Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for data to support Wilkinson’s FAIR principles of data. The DOI system was originally developed to provide persistent linking for citable and traceable referencing to static datasets in scholarly literature. Nowadays, DOIs and other persistent identifiers can also be assigned to dynamic datasets and data products and used as a means to recognise, acknowledge and reward the originators of the data. Initial metrics available for data citation allow data providers to demonstrate, justify, motivate and account for the value of the data collected by institutions and individual scientists. The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) has become interested in using dataset DOIs as a tool to accelerate its data visibility, discovery, usability, usage reporting and acknowledgement. A pilot project for the attribution of DOIs to SARAO’s datasets in radio astronomy, fundamental astronomy and geodesy is currently under way. Objectives of this project are to develop user-friendly systems towards data discovery and visibility, thereby ensuring usability and acknowledgement via the DOI-linked citation while providing SARAO with a usage reporting tool. In addition, methods of linking our publications with our datasets are being devised. We present progress made with the pilot project and wish to create awareness of the advancement of open data and open science platforms in radio astronomy, fundamental astronomy and geodesy, both locally and internationally, in the use of DOIs as persistent identifiers.

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