5. After the research

Opening up research data 

• enhances data reuse 
• advances research and innovations 
• improves research reliability 
• promotes research collaboration 
• spares resources when suitable research data is already available. 

Research data can be shared openly by 

• depositing them in a general or discipline-specific data repository 
• depositing them in an institutional data repository  
• submitting them to an open data journal. 

Opening and publishing data typically takes place after the research project has ended but can also occur during the research, as is the case with longer projects, in particular. However, it is highly important that you plan the opening of your data right at the beginning of the research project. it may otherwise turn out to be impossible to open the data afterwards. 

Ethical or juridical matters may set some limitations to the level of openness of your data. For example, sensitive or confidential information or trade/professional secrets restrict opening the data. If your research data include any personal data, pay careful attention to data protection guidelines (see chapter 2). 

In case you cannot fully open your data due to confidentiality, contracts, or other limiting issues, you can in most cases still publish the metadata (i.e. the description of the data). Publishing metadata brings visibility to the research data and to the research itself even in cases when the actual data cannot be opened or published for some reason. 

After the research, the research data must be preserved for at least the retention period to enable the verification of the research results. The appropriate retention period depends on several factors. After the retention period, the research data must be disposed of appropriately with information security also considered. According to the guidelines of the University of Eastern Finland, research data should be stored for at least five years after the research, unless they are subject to, for example, legislative storage period requirements. Please see these UEF guidelines behind the link: Preserving research data after research in University of Eastern Finland. 

The instructions can help you determine the storage period suitable for your research data. As a general rule, the UEF storage systems are suitable for temporary storage as long as someone in the research team is affiliated with UEF, i.e. retains access to an active UEF account. 

When planning the retention period, it is worth considering whether the data could be reused or whether there are other reasons for the data to be preserved for a longer period after the research. If the research data contains personal data, data protection legislation must naturally be complied with. According to the Data Protection Regulation, personal data can only be kept for as long as it is necessary for the purpose of the research. Afterwards, the data must be either destroyed or anonymised, i.e. the personal data must be deleted. Subjects must also be informed about the processing of personal data after the research (see chapter 2 of the study material). 

Long-term preservation refers to the permanent preservation of digital information, guaranteeing its usability for decades or even centuries. It aims to ensure that highly significant materials remain usable for future generations. Long-term preservation requires the maintenance of research data as functional and usable. This requires sufficiently accurate descriptive information, i.e. metadata, so that the material is understandable and reusable. The preserved data must remain reusable for future generations even when previous file formats, software, and/or hardware become obsolete. It is therefore advisable to save the data in file formats that can be processed by most software. This often means open, non-commercial, file formats. If necessary, the long-term-stored material must be converted to another file format to ensure its usability. 

Research data can be opened for other users to varying degrees, stored for a fixed period of time, or preserved long-term in data archives or repositories. Data repositories and archives are kinds of databases that are specialised in the publishing and preservation of research data. They can be either general repositories, which accept data from various scientific disciplines, or discipline-specific repositories, which focus on a particular discipline or theme.  

Repositories may be free of charge for researchers to upload their data, or they may charge a fee for hosting the data. The researcher can choose a repository that best suits their data and discipline. In addition, many publishers have their own recommendations for data repositories. 

Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data.org) can be used to search suitable data repositories filtering by research field or topic. The UEF Open Research Data page also provides help in finding a suitable repository. 

Below are two examples of commonly used data repositories in which research data can be stored:  

Finnish Social Science Data Archive is a free of charge, digital preservation service for research, teaching and study purposes, in accordance with the FAIR principles. The archive is specialised in social sciences data. It curates the data for further use through describing and anonymisation. The data are issued a persistent identifier (DOI), which supports their reuse. 

Zenodo is a free international and general open data storage and sharing service, which can be used to store i.e. publications, posters, presentations, research data, images, videos, software and lectures. While persistent identifiers (DOI) are issued for the data, Zenodo does not curate the data, hence leaving the usability of the data as the researcher’s responsibility. Zenodo is maintained by CERN, and its main funders include the European Commission (OpenAIRE). 

Note! UEF eRepo is not a data repository, which means that at UEF, researchers cannot directly deposit their data to UEF eRepo. Instead, it collects (i.e. harvests) information of research data and publications that have been deposited by UEF researchers in other repositories or services, thus increasing the visibility of their research. 

After the planned retention period, the research data must be properly disposed of, with data security also considered. Deliberate disposal of research data is an essential part of safe research data management. For example, simply deleting a file from a hard drive does not always delete the file completely. Sometimes, it is necessary to overwrite the file, which ensures the permanent deletion of the data. Your organisation’s IT services can help in such situations.  

You can find UEF’s instructions on secure data disposal on the university’s internal Heimo website, under information security, where there are links to e.g. up-to-date training materials for university personnel.  

When opening your research data, you need to license them, meaning the terms and rights of use, and the level openness must be defined. Creative Commons is a general licensing system that is used internationally. It provides free copyright licences that allow for easy and standardised defining of how openly online material can be use, i.e. the ways in which others may copy, distribute and use the research data. 

For open research data, the CC BY 4.0 or CC0 license are recommended, and the CC0 license is recommended for metadata. For computer software, the MIT or GLP licenses are recommended. 

Creative Commons licenses 

CC BY is the most common and flexible license. It allows others to copy, transmit, distribute, and present the original copyrighted work and modified versions of it, provided the original author is credited. The license is recommended for when you want to maximise the use and distribution of the work and ensure that the original author is properly acknowledged. In the case of the CC0 link, the original author does not have to be credited, although it is good practice to do so. 

CC BY-SA allows others to distribute and modify the work and create new works based on it, also for commercial purposes, as long as the original author is credited and the new works are licensed under the same terms.  

CC BY-NC allows others to distribute and modify the work and create new works based on it, although not for commercial purposes. The new works must also be non-commercial and the original author must be credited. Derivative works, however, do not need to be licensed under the same terms, which may lead to problems if the original author wishes to commercialise their work. 

CC BY-NC-SA allows others to distribute and modify the work and create new, non-commercial works based on it, as long as the original author is credited and the new works are licensed under similar terms. 

CC BY-ND allows the distribution of the work for commercial purposes as well, as long as the work is distributed unchanged and the original author is credited. 

CC BY-NC-ND allows others to distribute the work, as long as the original author is credited and the work is not modified in any way or used for commercial purposes. 

Data sharing – Where and how? (Basics of Open and Responsible Science: Open Access Publishing and Research Data. UEF open learning material)

How to License Research Data (Digital Curation Centre – DCC)

Open research data and methods. National policy and executive plan by the higher education and research community for 2021–2025. Policy component 1 (Open access to research data) and 2 (Open access to research methods and infrastructures). Responsible research series 4:2023, National Open Science Coordination, Federation of Finnish Learned Societies.

Open research data (UEF Open science website) with subsections.

Researcher’s check list for publishing data (Responsible Research)