❓ FAQ
Are nanopublications peer reviewed? If so, how?
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Are there nanopublication-focused competitions or games?
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Can I export my database as nanopublications? Should I?
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Can I publish nanopublications in languages other than English?
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Do nanopublications count in academic assessments?
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How are nanopublications licensed?
A license is not technically mandatory, but the nanopublication network requires that published nanopublications be openly shareable and replicable, so any license that is declared should be compatible with that.
In practice, most nanopublications point to a permissive license via the dct:license predicate in their publication info — typically CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) or CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).
Because the license is part of the signed, immutable nanopublication, it travels with the content and is verifiable by anyone who later retrieves it.
How can I contribute to further development of the nanopublication system?
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How can I find nanopublications meeting certain criteria?
The main entry point for finding nanopublications by criteria is Nanopub Query — a service that exposes published SPARQL query templates as REST API endpoints. Anyone can publish a new query as a nanopublication and immediately use it via the API; existing templates cover common needs such as finding nanopublications by author, type, topic, or content. For fully custom searches, direct SPARQL queries can also be issued against the type-specific or full nanopublication endpoints. For interactive use, Nanodash offers a Query tab that lets you browse and run all published query templates, and pre-built views are also available on user, space, and resource pages.
How can the quality of nanopublications be assessed?
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How can the usage of nanopublications be assessed?
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How do nanopublications interact with knowledge graphs?
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How do nanopublications relate to more traditional scholarly publication types?
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How is the nanopublication ecosystem governed?
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How many nanopublications have been published?
As of mid-2026, the current (second-generation) Nanopub Registry tracks roughly 80,000 signed nanopublications, with the count growing continuously; the live total is shown on the registry's homepage. Different registry instances may report slightly different totals depending on which nanopublications they accept (for example, by trusted agents or by type), so a single number should be understood as a snapshot of one particular registry. In addition, the earlier first-generation nanopub-server network still preserves the historical, mostly unsigned nanopublications accumulated over the past decade — currently around 11 million. This legacy network no longer plays an active role in the current ecosystem but remains accessible as an archive.
How should nanopublications be cited?
Every nanopublication has a globally unique, content-based Trusty URI, made persistently resolvable through w3id.org (for example, https://w3id.org/np/RA...). This URI is the canonical citation: it permanently identifies the exact, immutable content of the nanopublication, can be verified by anyone who retrieves it, and resolves to a viewable rendering.
When listing a nanopublication in a reference list, treat the trusty URI as the URL and use the metadata from the publication info for the rest: dct:creator (typically an ORCID) for the author, rdfs:label for the title, and dct:created for the date. Because the trusty URI is immutable, no version, hash, or access date is needed — even if the nanopublication is later superseded or retracted, the citation still points unambiguously at the original version.
For example, the nanopublication at https://w3id.org/np/RAiBSheuO17iqJacTs9aSeK3k80vf4BswE5BNQ-UR9MG0 could be cited as:
Kuhn, T. (2026). Night train to Vienna [nanopublication]. https://w3id.org/np/RAiBSheuO17iqJacTs9aSeK3k80vf4BswE5BNQ-UR9MG0
How sustainable is the nanopublication ecosystem?
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I have an idea regarding nanopublications. What mechanisms are there to help implement that idea?
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In what ways can nanopublications be combined with each other?
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Is there a sandbox environment in which I can try out nanopublications?
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What are good ways to enter the nanopublication system?
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What are nanopublications useful for?
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What are the components of a nanopublication?
A nanopublication consists of three main parts: (1) an assertion, (2) information on the provenance of the assertion, (3) bibliographic metadata about the nanopublication itself. For further details, see https://nanopub.net/.
What is "nano" about nanopublications, and how do they relate to micropublications?
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What kinds of events are centred around nanopublications?
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What tech stack is the nanopublication ecosystem based on?
The nanopublication ecosystem is built entirely on standard RDF and Semantic Web technologies. Each nanopublication is an RDF dataset of four named graphs, typically serialized as TriG. Identifiers are Trusty URIs — content-based hashes that make every nanopublication immutable and self-verifying — and integrity and authorship are protected by RSA digital signatures recorded in the publication info. In practice, Trusty URIs are commonly made persistently resolvable through w3id.org, and authors are commonly identified by ORCID, but neither is a technical requirement of the format. At the network level, the Nanopub Registry stores and serves nanopublications through an HTTP REST interface, while Nanopub Query provides SPARQL endpoints and additionally exposes published SPARQL templates as REST APIs. Reference libraries are available in Java, Python, and Rust, and user-facing tools such as Nanodash are built on top of these.
What was the first nanopublication?
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Where can I see nanopublications in action?
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Where do questions about nanopublications get useful answers in reasonable time frames?
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Which parts of the research cycle are the least suited for using nanopublications?
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Which tooling is available to import or export nanopublications?
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Who can create nanopublications?
Anyone can create nanopublications. Technically, only a user identifier and an RSA key pair are needed. In practice, when using a tool like Nanodash, you don't have to deal with keys yourself — it generates and manages them on your behalf, and you simply sign in. Nanodash currently requires an ORCID, while the nanopublication format itself accepts any persistent user identifier; using ORCID is strongly recommended in any case, as it makes attribution interoperable across the scholarly ecosystem. If you publish locally (for example via the nanopub command-line tools), you do need to generate and manage your own key pair.