Towards more consistent, transparent, and multipurpose national bibliographic databases for research output

National bibliographic databases for research output collect metadata on universities’ scholarly publications, such as journal articles, monographs, and conference papers. As this sort of research information is increasingly used in assessments, funding allocation, and other academic reward structures, the value in developing comprehensive and reliable national databases becomes more and more clear. Linda Sīle, Raf Guns and Tim Engels outline the challenges faced by those developing national bibliographic databases for research output, from the need for reliable (persistent) identifiers, through to the new and evolving contexts for data use.