Citing Collections of Media

There are two kinds of collections that would at first seem appropriate for citing collections of media: Projects and Media Lists.  Generally speaking, Projects should not be cited as the source of a specific collection of media from which an analysis or conclusion was based. We recommend against this because the primary role of Projects is as a "collaborative container" that different users can use to build a collection in private prior to making it publically accessible. Projects in MorphoSource are can never, in a meaningful sense be "finished/completed". Someone could always add or remove media from them.  Thus over time, the Project contents may come to reflect something different than the dataset used in a given paper.  On the other hand, Projects can be cited as the location for a growing/changing collection of media.  When citing a Project in this way, it is best to give the exact Project title and the 9 digit MorphoSource Project ID. We recommend against including the Project URL, as we would discourage the citation of URLs from any website. The reason we do not recommend citing Project URLs is that website URLs are inherently instable.  Instead, online resources are best cited using a DOI or other managed, unique and resolvable identifier.  However, MorphoSource does not mint DOIs for Projects. We do not mint DOIs for Projects for the same reason we recommend against their citation as a specific collection of media. We believe that DOIs should reference a stable, unchanging resource, for maximum scientific transparency.

Instead, Media List DOIs should be used to reference a specific collection media from which an analysis or conclusion was based.  Currently, if the user has their collection of media in a Project, they should submit a request to the MorphoSource administrators to create a Media List based on the project and to assign a DOI to it. Once a DOI is assigned to the Media List, media can no longer be added or removed from it.