The Data Provenance Initiative is a multi-disciplinary volunteer effort to improve transparency, documentation, and responsible use of training datasets for AI.
In its own words: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Data-Provenance-Initiative/Data-Provenance-Collection/main/README.md, read 2026-10-29
| What receives provenance | a fine-tuning dataset, traced through its collection to its sources |
| Relations carried | derivation (source and lineage); creators; licences; subsequent use op |
| Carrier | audit metadata per dataset; a Data Provenance Card generated for a chosen subset op |
| Expresses · records · tests | expressesrecordstests |
| Operations tested | dataset repackaging and hosting (licence carried or lost on hosting sites) |
| What survived | the founding paper reports licence omission of 70%+ and error rates of 50%+ on widely used hosting sites op |
op the operator's own statement · 3p a third-party account · obs our observation · rd our reading. Hover a tag for its quote; each opens below with its source.
| Canonical name | Data Provenance Initiative |
| Also known as | Data Provenance Explorer, Data Provenance Collection, Data Provenance Card |
| Address | https://www.dataprovenance.org/ |
| Operator | the Data Provenance Initiative (volunteer effort; paper by Shayne Longpre and 16 other authors) |
| Founded | 2023 (arXiv:2310.16787, v1 25 October 2023) |
| Kind | audit collection and explorer |
| Unit | a dataset within a collection |
| Lifecycle | active |
| Count | 44 data collections, 1800+ fine-tuning text-to-text datasets (first release) (as of the repository README) op |
| Data access | repository scripts to filter and download; the Explorer (a JavaScript application, unreadable to a plain fetch) |
| Versions and dates | paper v1: 2023-10-25; paper v3: 2023-11-04; read: 2026-10-29 |
| Observation | 2026-10-29: read |
db4c35a5f4f2b17a…db4c35a5f4f2b17a…db4c35a5f4f2b17a…d01552052066b391…d01552052066b391…d01552052066b391…db4c35a5f4f2b17a…db4c35a5f4f2b17a…d01552052066b391…Lee Sharks, ed. "Data Provenance Initiative." Provenance meta-aggregator, Provenance Erasure, compiled 2026-10-29. https://www.provenanceerasure.org/aggregators/data-provenance-initiative
Record https://www.provenanceerasure.org/aggregators/data-provenance-initiative · entity https://www.provenanceerasure.org/aggregators/data-provenance-initiative#entity · the census as data
@misc{pe-dataprovenanceinitiative2026,
editor = {Sharks, Lee},
title = {Data Provenance Initiative},
howpublished = {Provenance meta-aggregator, Provenance Erasure},
year = {2026},
note = {Compiled 2026-10-29; every field sourced and dated},
url = {https://www.provenanceerasure.org/aggregators/data-provenance-initiative}
}