Mahalo Button

About the Mahalo Button

Concept

What is Mahalo?

'Mahalo' is a Hawaiian word for ‘thank you,’ but it has a broader meaning such as admiration, praise, esteem, regards and respects (Mary Kawena Pukui et al., Hawaiian Dictionary, 1986).

Problem

Data creators should be rewarded by credit, such as by data citation, but the current system for analyzing citation is heavy-weight.

Solution

A light-weight system called ‘Mahalo Button’ is provided for data users to express gratitude directly to data creators. ‘The network of gratitude’ grows by (voluntary) actions of data users. Read more..

The Network of Gratitude

  1. Pay-back connection: Data users can express gratitude to data creators by a button push, which is a popular action on today’s Internet (e.g. Like button).
  2. Pay-forward connection: Data creators’ landing page becomes a hub of information, and data users can contribute to potential data users by sharing methods and results on the data.

Concept of Mahalo Button

Concept of Mahalo Button

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

DOI as a gift

The concept of ‘Mahalo Button’ is for data users to give DOI as a gift for data creators and make a new connection at the button.

Why DOI?

DOI offers sustainable accessibility than URI and is expected to be less vulnerable to spam (at least for the moment).

Impact of the data

Impact can be measured by the number of DOI returned to the button of the dataset, which is a new approach to data citation.

Try the Mahalo Button

You can try the button below to check how the Mahalo Button works. Note that users can freely add any DOIs.

374 Mahalo Buttons are active now!

News

2022-09-30 Mahalo Button was updated.

2021-07-01 Mahalo Button was released.

Read more..

Publications

  1. Asanobu KITAMOTO, "Mahalo project: a lightweight solution for connecting data creators and users with pay-back and pay-forward incentives", Japan Open Science Summit 2018, June 2018.
  2. Asanobu KITAMOTO, "Return on publication (RoP): “DOI return button” for networking data creators and users with pay-back and pay-forward incentives", Abstracts of Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU) Meeting 2018, No. MGI23-P06, May 2018.
  3. Asanobu KITAMOTO, "To Make the Impact of Research Data Measurable - Data Citation and the Mahalo Project -", Japan Open Science Summit 2021, June 2021 (in Japanese)

More publications..