To identify the controls on dissolved organic carbon (DOC) production, we incubated soils from 18 sites, a mixture of 52 forest floor and peats and 41 upper mineral soil samples, at three temperatures (3, 10, and 22°C) for over a year and measured DOC concentration in the leachate and carbon dioxide (CO2) production from the samples. Concentrations of DOC in the leachate were in the range encountered in field soils (<2 to >50 mg l−1). There was a decline in DOC production during the incubation, with initial rates averaging 0.03–0.06 mg DOC g−1 soil C day−1, falling to averages of 0.01 mg g−1 soil C day−1; the rate of decline was not strongly related to temperature. Cumulative DOC production rates over the 395 days ranged from less than 0.01 to 0.12 mg g−1 soil C day−1 (0.5–47.6 mg g−1 soil C), with an average of 0.021 mg g−1 soil C day−1 (8.2 mg g−1 soil C). DOC production rate was weakly related to temperature, equivalent to Q10 values of 0.9 to 1.2 for mineral samples and 1.2 to 1.9 for organic samples. Rates of DOC production in the organic samples were correlated with cellulose (positively) and lignin (negatively) proportion in the organic matter, whereas in the mineral samples C and nitrogen (N) provided positive correlations. The partitioning of C released into CO2–C and DOC showed a quotient (CO2–C:DOC) that varied widely among the samples, from 1 to 146. The regression coefficient of CO2–C:DOC production (log10 transformed) ranged from 0.3 to 0.7, all significantly less than 1. At high rates of DOC production, a smaller proportion of CO2 is produced. The CO2–C:DOC quotient was dependent on incubation temperature: in the organic soil samples, the CO2–C:DOC quotient rose from an average of 6 at 3 to 16 at 22°C and in the mineral samples the rise was from 7 to 27. The CO2–C:DOC quotient was related to soil pH in the organic samples and C and N forms in the mineral samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]