How do you expose your data products?
The documentation needs for API data products go beyond standard API mechanics and must explicitly support both data understanding and trust.
This new category for 2025 shines a spotlight on the distinct documentation requirements of data products delivered via APIs—particularly in contrast to operational APIs or microservices. The focus here is on data content, structure, provenance, and interpretability. While operational API documentation explains how to call a function, data product documentation must additionally enable clients to understand, trust, and effectively use the data itself. For API data products, users require a hybrid of technical API documentation and classic data dictionary or metadata documentation.
In this category, we recognize outstanding examples of API data product portals that empower clients to consume these information assets for decision-making, analytics, modeling, and more. A nominee might be a standalone portal or a dedicated section within a broader platform, specifically focused on the organization’s data products. Strong emphasis is placed on lifecycle management and on bringing information assets out of “dark data territory” into tangible business value.
Award Criteria
Questions to ask:
- How do you expose your data products? Consumers need to fully grasp what data is available, what it means, and how to work with it.
- How do you communicate pricing strategies for a product that radically changes in value depending on its use case?
- How do you manage the different formats in which data can be used?
- Does the documentation help users assess the fitness for purpose, biases, and reliability? Is there transparency around coverage, accuracy, and known gaps? Is there clarity about schema changes, data updates, and deprecations?
- Does the data product come with regulatory, privacy, and licensing constraints? How do you help prevent legal risks and support responsible data use?
