What are Zenodo communities and how do they work?

Updated

Zenodo communities are curated collection pages that group research outputs around a project, institution, journal, or discipline. They let you browse everything related to that topic in one place, and in many cases submit your own uploads for review by the community's curators. You can use them to find work in a specific area or to give your own outputs a visible home alongside related research.

What a community actually is

A community is a page on Zenodo that gathers items — datasets, software, presentations, publications, and other research outputs — under a shared identity. Instead of searching all of Zenodo, you go to the community and see only what belongs to it.

From the featured communities on Zenodo's homepage, you can see the range of what a community can represent:

Community What it groups
EU Open Research Repository Research outputs from Horizon Europe, Euratom, and earlier Framework Programmes
AAS Journals Data and software tied to AAS Journal articles (ApJ, AJ, ApJL, ApJS, BAAS, PSJ, RNAAS)
The Generic Mapping Tools Items related to the Generic Mapping Tools software
Biodiversity Literature Repository Publications related to bio-systematics
Machine Learning for Particle Physics Work in that research area
Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI) Data management and sharing efforts within the NIH data ecosystem
Aurora Universities Network Results from projects across a European university network
European Climate and Energy Modelling Forum (ECEMF) Energy and climate research and policy work
CoARA National Chapters Presentations and materials from the CoARA reform initiative

So a community can be built around a funder programme, a journal, a software project, a discipline, a university network, or a research initiative. The common thread is that someone set it up to collect related outputs.

How curation works

Communities are not just automatic tag pages. Many have a review step. The AAS Journals community, for example, states that draft review and community submissions are welcome and "will be curated by the AAS Data Editors." That means a human editor checks submissions before they appear.

This matters for two reasons:

  • If you are browsing, curation signals that the items in the community meet that group's criteria.
  • If you are submitting, you may need to wait for a curator to accept your upload, and your item should fit the community's scope.

Not every community necessarily reviews every submission the same way, so check the individual community page for its stated policy before you rely on a fast turnaround.

Browsing a community

  1. Open the community page from the featured list or search for it on Zenodo.
  2. Read the description to confirm the scope matches what you need.
  3. Scan the listed uploads. Each entry shows its type (for example Dataset or Presentation), version, upload date, and often a "Part of" label linking it back to the community.
  4. Open an item to see its files, metadata, and usage counts.

For example, a recent upload in the Leishmania and leishmaniasis community is a dataset labeled "LINF_210011300," version 1, uploaded September 22, 2026, with 0 views and 0 downloads at the time shown. The "Part of" line tells you which community it belongs to, so you can jump from a single item to the wider collection.

Submitting to a community

The general flow is:

  1. Upload your item to Zenodo as you normally would.
  2. When choosing where it belongs, select the community you want it associated with (or add the community during the upload/deposit process).
  3. If the community curates submissions, your item enters review. The AAS community, for instance, explicitly welcomes draft review and community submissions handled by its Data Editors.
  4. Once accepted, the item appears in the community alongside related work.

The expected result is that your output becomes discoverable both on your own Zenodo record and within the community's collection.

Common sticking points

  • Scope mismatch. A community tied to a specific journal or project will usually only accept outputs that relate to it. Read the description first.
  • Review delay. Curated communities add a human step, so your item may not appear immediately.
  • Assuming a community equals a guarantee. Curation means someone checked fit and quality against that group's criteria — it is not a formal peer review of your research.
  • Confusing communities with your own uploads. Your item can belong to a community while still living on your Zenodo account; the community is an additional layer of visibility, not a replacement.

If your goal is to reach a specific audience — funders, a journal's readers, a software user base, or a disciplinary group — joining the relevant community is the practical way to do it. If you just want a stable, citable record, a plain Zenodo upload without a community may be enough.