Share your data
Your data are a research output and sharing your data can benefit you and your research. Data sharing is also increasingly required by funders and publishers. You should plan from the beginning of your research what, if any, data you will share and how.
Why share your data?
There are many benefits to sharing your data openly in an appropriate repository.
- Showcase your research and gain credit and visibility beyond publications.
- Increase your citations and gauge interest in your work.
- Enable opportunities for collaboration and new avenues of enquiry.
- Obtain peer and community verification.
- Facilitate reproducibility and demonstrate research integrity.
- Attract funding for your research.
- Obtain secure, long-term preservation.
There may be cases where some data cannot be shared or access to it needs to be restricted. However, you should still ensure the details about the data are discoverable and accessible by creating a metadata-only record in Figshare.
What data will you share?
It may not be appropriate or useful to share all of your research-related materials. Decide which data to share, for example your raw data, or collated datasets, or solely the data underpinning a publication. You could also make available any code, images, transcripts, or recordings.
When will you share the data?
Usually, data is shared at the end of the project or at the point of publication, but you could share it during the project. Consider how long you will need exclusive use of the data before you make it available.
If your publication is under embargo for a time or you need to seek proprietary rights/patents, you may need to embargo your data too.
Prepare your data
- Gather all of your data and related materials (e.g. raw data, processed datasets, code, software, figures, images).
- Verify that you can share the data publicly. Do you need to remove any personal data or sensitive data before you can share?
- Use open file formats. If the proprietary software is the best way of using the data, consider providing a version in open source software alongside it.
- Check and organise your files.
- Write a README file which describes the data: explain the organisation, structure and content of the data; list the files you have uploaded, including folder structure, naming conventions and format; list and define variables; provide context to use and interpret the data; state software requirements to access the data; outline data collection and quality control methodology.
How to share your data
The best way to share your data is via a repository. You can deposit it in a subject or disciplinary repository or in the Edge Hill Figshare repository.
Sometimes publishers may want you to publish your data as supplementary information to your article or to use their own data repository. Make sure that you can either make your data open access or deposit it in Figshare as well.
If you decide to store different parts of your data/related materials in different repositories, due to their nature or format, ensure you link each item to the others and to any publications. It is helpful to explain how and why they have been deposited separately. Use the same keywords for each item so that they are more easily discovered in a search.
If you share your data in a subject or other repository, you should add a metadata record to Figshare and link to it.
Note that you cannot put restricted or sensitive data in Figshare. If access should be restricted, establish a process for access and provide terms and conditions, e.g. via direct contact with you, under a data sharing agreement, or via authorised log-in on a repository that is able to restrict access appropriately. You should still create a metadata record in Figshare and add information about how to access the data.
Certain forms of collaboration or sharing of sensitive data may require a formal data sharing agreement – this must be done via the Research Office.
Help others to use your data
Organise your data appropriately so that you and others know what is there and how to use it. It is worth checking whether there are any standards within your discipline on how to present your data for re-use. Consider whether this will require additional effort or resource.
Bear in mind the following:
Further support
For support with sharing your data or other questions about research data management, please contact Esther Byrom, Research Data Manager.