Data publication: Home

When you publish your dataset, you need to employ good data practices to ensure that your data can be found, accessed and reused.  Following the six steps listed below will help ensure your data is effectively published.

1. Determine if you can publish your data: Before you decide to publish your data, check to ensure your legally and ethically allowed to.
2. Publish in the best place: There are many places to publish data. It’s up to you to decide if you want to publish in a discipline specific repository that contains data like yours, the University’s institutional repository, or a general repository such as Figshare.
3. Describe your data: Publishing a thorough description of your data along with the dataset means that others will be able to understand and reuse your data.
4. Use the best file format: choosing an open or standard file format means that everyone will be able to open your dataset.
5. License your data: Applying a licence to your data enables others to understand how your data can be used.
6. Get a persistent identifier: Persistent identifiers, like DOIs and ORCiDs, are the easiest way of linking items together, such as a dataset to a related publication. They also make your data easier to cite and enable you to measure the reuse of your data through metrics.

Get recognition and credit for your work

Publishing your research data and datasets in a data repository can allow for your data to be reused and cited in other works. Some repositories may even provide tools to track how people use your data, such as Altmetrics. Datasets can be published in their own right, without an associated research paper, which can allow you to gain recognition for work that may not qualify for authorship in a traditional research journal. 

Verify and strengthen your research findings

Datasets that are published to support your findings in a research paper can be reproduced by others allowing for your research to be verified and further strengthen the credibility of your work.  

Meet requirements for journals and funders

Increasingly, major journal publishers and funders are now making it a requirement that you share your research data upon publishing your research papers, providing your data to peer reviewers are also becoming the norm in the peer review process. Being one step ahead and having a reusable dataset ready to go can make your job a lot easier when it comes to publishing your research. 

Video from DANS (Data Archiving and Networked Services), Netherlands explaining the benefits and challenges to sharing research data: https://youtu.be/HJbo-OAaJ1I

For further assistance in publishing your research data, email us!