5. Opening and publishing research data

Making research data open and available for others can e.g.

• enhance data reuse
• advance research and innovations
• improve research reliability
• promote research collaboration
• save resources, when time and money are saved from data collection if suitable material is already available.

Research data can be shared openly by

• depositing them to an international/national, general, or discipline-specific data repository
• depositing them in an institutional data repository
• submitting them to an open data journal.

Opening and publishing the data typically takes place after the research project has ended but can happen during the research as well especially in long projects. However, it is highly important that you plan to open the data already in the beginning of the research project. In many cases, data cannot be made openly available without careful planning before the data collection has started.

Depending on the nature of the data, data may be opened to a varying degree for others to be accessed and utilized through open data archives and repositories. 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 personal data, pay attention to data protection guidelines (see chapter 2).

If your data cannot be made openly available, you need to validate this in your data management plan. In case you cannot fully open your data (because of confidentiality, contracts, or other limiting issues), you can, however, usually publish the metadata (i.e., the description of the data). Publishing metadata brings visibility to the data and to the research itself even in cases when the actual data cannot be opened or published for some reason.

Data repositories are kind of databases that contain published datasets with their descriptive metadata (e.g., content, owner, and right of use). There are many data repositories, both general repositories and discipline-specific repositories, which focus on a particular research 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 the data and the discipline. Many publishers also have their own recommendations for data repositories, so check those when publishing your article and data.

Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data.org) can be used for searching suitable data repositories. You can, e.g., browse by subject there. Also, check the UEF Data Support website for information about data repositories (the site is going to be updated during the fall 2023).

Here are two examples of data repositories representing discipline oriented and general repositories:

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. It makes the data suitable for re-use, handles describing the data and storing it in a suitable file format, and helps anonymization. The data is issued a permanent identifier.

Zenodo is a free international and general open data storage and sharing service. Zenodo can also be used to store different types of data, including publications, posters, presentations, research data, images, videos, software, and lectures. The data is issued a permanent identifier (DOI). 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 the research data and publications that have been deposited by UEF researchers in other repositories or services.

When opening your data, you need to license them. By licensing data, researchers can define the level of openness and rights to use the data.

Creative Commons provides free, easy-to-use copyright licenses to make a simple and standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work – on conditions of your choice. For open research data, the CC BY 4.0 (version 4.0 now) or CC0 license is recommended, and the CC0 license is recommended for metadata.

For computer software, the MIT or GLP License are recommended.

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)