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Research Data Toolkit

This guide is intended to help researchers, data creators or others who manage digital data as part of a research project, plan, organize, describe, share and preserve their research data for the long term.

Why Share Your Research Data?

Research data holds immense potential that extends well beyond the completion of a research project. By sharing your data with others, you're not only fostering collaboration but also offering a valuable resource for those interested in building upon your findings and expanding the horizons of knowledge. Moreover, many funding agencies now mandate the sharing and preservation of research data as part of the data management plan.

Here are some compelling reasons why sharing research data is beneficial:

  1. Expands Scientific Inquiry: Shared data opens new avenues for scientific exploration and investigation, allowing researchers to delve deeper into existing research questions or explore entirely new ones.

  2. Encourages Diversity of Analysis: By providing access to your data, you invite diverse perspectives and methodologies, enriching the analysis and interpretation of the data.

  3. Sparks Innovation: Shared data can inspire novel ideas and innovative research directions, catalyzing advancements in various fields of study.

  4. Facilitates Hypothesis Testing: Others can use your data to test alternative hypotheses or conduct further analyses, contributing to the robustness and reliability of research findings.

  5. Supports Future Studies: Shared data serves as a foundation for future studies, enabling researchers to build upon existing datasets and explore new avenues of inquiry.

  6. Fosters Exploration: Researchers can explore new research questions or topics that may not have been initially considered by the original data collector, leading to unforeseen discoveries and insights.

  7. Educational Resource: Shared data serves as a valuable educational resource for aspiring researchers, providing real-world examples for learning data analysis techniques and research methodologies.

Options for Sharing & Long-Term Preservation

There are many options available for sharing and preserving your research data.  Ensuring that data are usable and understandable by others requires some thought and planning.  You may choose to use, services such as an institutional repository, external repositories, data centers, or journal publishers. Another option is to make your data sharable through a project website. 

There are various ways to share research data, including:

Institutional Repository Services

The Library manages an institutional repository designed to collect, preserve, and disseminate digital versions of faculty publications and research data. This repository significantly enhances the visibility and accessibility of faculty work. By archiving your research in the institutional repository, you can increase its impact and reach a broader audience. The Library will collaborate with you to secure the necessary author rights for self-archiving your current and future publications.

Other Ways to Share Research Data

  • Data Repositories: Deposit data in disciplinary or institutional repositories specifically designed for storing and sharing research data. Examples include Dryad, Figshare, and Zenodo.

  • Subject-Specific Archives: Submit data to subject-specific archives or databases tailored to a particular field or research area. These archives often have specialized metadata standards and domain-specific search capabilities.

  • Journal Supplementary Materials: Include datasets as supplementary materials when publishing research articles in scholarly journals. Many journals encourage or require authors to provide access to underlying data to support transparency and reproducibility.

  • Data Journals: Publish datasets in data journals that specialize in publishing datasets and data articles. Data journals focus on the description, curation, and peer review of datasets, providing a platform for sharing data independently of research articles.

  • Collaborative Platforms: Collaborate with colleagues and research partners through collaborative platforms or project-specific websites to share data within research teams or collaborative projects. Platforms like GitHub, GitLab, and Google Drive facilitate version control and collaboration on data and code.

  • Data Supplements: Provide data supplements or data packages alongside research publications, including datasets, code, documentation, and other relevant materials necessary to reproduce the research findings.

  • Data Citations: Cite datasets in research publications and include Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) or other persistent identifiers to facilitate attribution and enable others to easily locate and access the data.

  • Data Sharing Platforms: Utilize data sharing platforms and networks that facilitate data discovery, access, and collaboration across disciplines, such as DataONE, DataCite, and the Open Science Framework (OSF).

Tips for Selecting a Repository for Depositing Data

When choosing a repository it is important to consider factors such as whether the repository.
 
  • Select a repository that supports the types and formats of data you intend to deposit.
  • Choose repositories that are widely used and trusted by researchers in your field,
  • Consider whether the repository accepts diverse data types such as text, images, videos, or structured datasets.
  • Provides you with a login accessible account which allows you access your data and make any up-dates.
  • Supplies guidance on submitting your data and provides a mode for you to communicate with them before, during, and after you submit your data. 
  • Evaluate the repository's commitment to data preservation and long-term access.
  • Gives your submitted dataset a persistent and unique identifier so your data is findable, citable, and can be linked to your publications and other grants.
  • Provides a landing page for each dataset, with metadata that helps others find it, tell what it is, relate it to publications, and cite it. 
  • Consider whether the repository provides usage metrics and analytics to track the impact and usage of your deposited data.
  • Offers clear terms and conditions in terms of reuse without unnecessary licensing conditions. Many repositories use the CCO Creative Commons, which provides public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work.
  • Provides guidance on how to cite the data that has been deposited.
  • Gives explicit details about the fee required for you to deposit your data.