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Managing Your Research Data: Access & share

Funding agencies increasingly require some degree of public access to data. Publishers also may require authors to submit data accompanying a publication. Openly sharing data helps increase the visibility of your research, maximises transparency, and reduces the cost of duplication, and ensures that your data is on the road to being FAIR.

Tohatoha are an NZ organisation that educate around open access and advocate for open research. The UK Data Service also offers useful and succinct information on how to share data.

Otago ITS offer a high-speed data transfer service for data stored in their high capacity storage (HCS) service.

DATA REPOSITORIES

Data repositories host, preserve, and enable the sharing of research data. You have the option of depositing your data in a discipline/domain specific repository or you can also select a more general one.

Publishers might also specify which repository you have to use, if you have data accompanying your publication. 

Some options include:

  • Figshare - A free, generic repository accepting all file formats
  • DRYAD - A curated resource that makes the data underlying scientific publications discoverable, freely reusable, and citable
  • Zenodo - A science-focused, multi-format repository from CERN
  • Harvard Dataverse - An open source web application enabling researchers, institutions, or journals to share, preserve, cite, explore, and analyze data

You can also search data repository directories to discover datasets for your research or to find a repository to store and share your data. The most comprehensive of these is re3data.org.

DATA CITATIONS

Data is increasingly recognised as a primary research output. Data citation practices enable the discovery of data by both machines and humans. For guidelines on how to properly cite datasets and link them to publications see the Australian Research Data Commons' guidelines as well as the Digital Curation Centre's guide.

TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE LABELS

The current move toward open data does not always consider Indigenous Peoples' rights and interests. Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Labels are an initiative for Indigenous communities and local organizations.

The TK and BC Labels identify and clarify community-specific rules and responsibilities regarding access and future use of traditional knowledge. They are customised by each community and can be translated into different languages. 

DATA LICENSING & COPYRIGHT

University of Otago staff have copyright over their data unless they transfer copyright elsewhere, e.g. to publishers, funders, or industry partners.

When you share your data, secondary users have to obtain permission before they can reproduce it. Data may be used for non-commercial teaching and research purposes providing its source is acknowledged under the copyright fair dealing concept.

Licensing can be complex and often requires discipline or situation-specific consideration. See the below links for some places to start:
https://otago.libguides.com/c.php?g=171566&p=6759385
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