Data Sharing and Archive
There are different ways of sharing your data:
- Peer-to-peer: Via email, posting to a website, etc.
- Archiving in a specialist data centre eg. NERC's British Atmospheric Data Centre, or the UK Data Archive.
- Self-archiving in an 'open access' repository (some funders now mandate that raw data be archived alongside final results)
- Archiving in an institutional repository eg. the University of Oxford's Databank, currently being piloted.
Some funding organisations have adopted data sharing policies that encourage or oblige researchers to share research datasets, findings and outputs, in order to facilitate the validation of results and further work by other researchers.
The following pages will help you consider related issues, and how to comply with relevant requirements.
Links to further information and resources
- The Research Skills Toolkit (SSO login needed) includes a section on Data Sharing and Archiving.
- Preservation, Sharing and Licensing is an interactive online training module from the MANTRA Project.
- The Digital Curation Centre offers a guide to how to Appraise and Select Research Data for Curation, plus a list of tools and services for Sharing Output and Tracking Impact.
- The DCC also make teaching materials for their Digital Curation 101 and Digital Curation 101 Lite courses available.
- The University of Cambridge’s research data management Web pages offer sections on Long-Term Storage and Preservation, Selection – Choosing What to Keep, Data Sharing, Sharing Files with Collaborators and Citing Data and Getting Cited.
- The PrePARe Project offers a useful Data Selection and Retention Checklist.
- Share It is a brief introductory PowerPoint presentation on making research available for re-use from the PrePARe Project at the University of Cambridge.
- The OTA (University of Oxford Text Archive) is a repository of digital literary and linguistic resources for research and teaching. In addition to providing information about when and how to deposit material with them, the site also offers advice on good practice in the creation and use of electronic resources.
Subject-specific guidance
- Social Sciences: The UK Data Archive provides an advice page on How to Share Data, aimed at researchers working in the social sciences and some humanities disciplines. Teaching materials for a classroom-based course on Sharing Your Data are also available.
- Creative Arts: Unit 3 of the CAiRO Project’s self-study materials explores the questions that need to be addressed as a creative arts research project draws to a conclusion.
- History: The Institute of Historical Research offers an online self-study course on Data Preservation.
- Archaeology: The Archaeology Data Service’s Guides to Good Practice include sections on Data Selection and The Project Archive: Storage and Dissemination.
- Archaeology: Module 6 of the DataTrain Archaeology teaching materials covers archiving digital data, while Module 5 deals specifically with e-theses.
- Social Anthropology: Module 3 of the DataTrain Social Anthropology teaching materials (aimed at advanced doctoral students and early career researchers) looks at long-term curation and allied ethical and legal issues.
- Health-Related Disciplines: Session 2 of the DATUM for Health teaching materials gives an overview of the data curation lifecycle, including checklists for various stages of the process.