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Science is built on a foundation of data. The production and publication of that data should be recognized as valuable scholarship, but data lacks an essential prerequisite for modern-day scholarly recognition—accepted metrics of significance. The scientific community has traditionally estimated the impact of a journal article by counting the number of subsequent references to it; more recently, a suite of web-based alternative metrics (‘altmetrics’) offer faster assessment and the chance capture other kinds of impact1. Data can be fit into these article-centered assessment systems by proxy, via data descriptor articles in journals like Earth Systems Science Data or Scientific Data2,3. Another approach is to apply familiar metrics directly to datasets published in online databases or repositories. Complicating matters, the same metric may mean different things with respect to articles versus datasets. A researcher can read an article online closely without downloading the PDF version, but if they view a dataset landing page without downloading the data, their level of engagement is almost certainly low. A better understanding of how to measure data impact is critical if we are to reward data creators and incentivize data publication.