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Zenodo

Zenodo is a general-purpose open repository for research outputs of any kind — papers, datasets, software, slides, posters, videos — run by CERN and born in 2013 within the OpenAIRE project. Anyone can deposit; every record gets a DOI, is preserved in CERN's data centre, and is harvested into the OpenAIRE Graph. Since 2023 it runs on InvenioRDM, CERN's open-source repository platform.

Records, drafts and DOIs

  • Draft first. A deposit starts as a private draft: metadata and files can be edited, replaced or discarded without trace. Its DOI can be reserved in advance, so that it can be written into the files, but it is registered only when the record is published.
  • Publishing is final. A published record cannot be deleted by its owner, and its files cannot be changed after a short grace period; the DOI is permanent.
  • Metadata can still be edited. Title, authors, description, links and access settings can be changed after publication, without changing the DOI.

Versions and the concept DOI

A record can have new versions — corrected slides, an updated dataset. Every version gets its own DOI, and all versions share a concept DOI (and a concept record ID) that always resolves to the latest version. Citing the concept DOI means "this work, in its current form"; citing a version DOI means "exactly this version". The versions of a record are listed on its Zenodo page.

Access

The record — metadata and DOI — is always public. The files can be:

  • public — anyone can download them;
  • restricted — visible only to the owner and to whom the owner grants access; anyone can send an access request, with the conditions the owner has written;
  • embargoed — restricted until a given date, then public.

The access of a published record can be changed later in either direction, by editing the record and publishing the change; the DOI does not change.

Metadata, communities, integration

  • Rich metadata: creators with ORCID iDs and affiliations (ROR), contributors with roles, licence, related works with typed relations (is supplement to, cites, …), funding (with the EU grants known to OpenAIRE), conference details, languages, subjects.
  • Communities: curated collections — of an institution, a project, an event — to which records are submitted and accepted by curators.
  • Accounts: personal; login with ORCID, GitHub or email. Deposits belong to the account that made them.
  • APIs: a REST API for depositing and editing, used through personal access tokens with chosen scopes (deposit:write, deposit:actions); an OAI-PMH endpoint for harvesting; automatic archiving of GitHub releases.
  • Limits: 50 GB and 100 files per record.

Zenodo and OpenAIRE

Zenodo was born within OpenAIRE and is one of its content providers (listed in OpenDOAR as repository 2659). For a deposit this means:

  • Every record enters the OpenAIRE Graph, and is found in OpenAIRE Explore by its DOI, with the access rights it declares: a record with restricted files appears as closed access.
  • The EU grants offered in Zenodo's funding field are OpenAIRE's own list of projects. A deposit linked to a grant is passed to OpenAIRE at once as a link to that project — a claim, then reviewed by OpenAIRE's curators — without waiting for the next harvest. From then on it counts among the project's outputs in Explore and Monitor, which is what the European Commission looks at.
  • Records without a grant reach the Graph with its regular updates.

See also