Research Data Management

There are thousands of data repositories available online. Here are the best practices for choosing a repository for your research data:

• Check whether your funder or publisher has a list of recommendations for data repositories
  • Some funders and publishers may require or suggest researchers to deposit data in specific data repositories
  • The recommendations can often be found in the "Data Policies" or "Instructions for Authors"
  • Alternatively, you can use FAIRsharing to search for data repositories recommended by funder and journal data policies
• Choose disciplinary repositories that are commonly used in your field to facilitate data discoverability
• Use certified repositories, preferably with a Data Seal of Approval (DSA) or CoreTrustSeal, whenever possible
  1. Use re3data to browse data repositories by subject, or to search for suitable disciplinary data repositories
  2. Then, filter your results to "DSA" or "CoreTrustSeal" under "Certificates" to look for the certified repositories
• Use general repositories when you cannot find a suitable discipline-specific repository for your research data
  • See "Data Repositories" for examples of some of the most widely used general repositories
• Select a data repository that issues a persistent identifier, preferably a Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
  • A persistent identifier can help others to easily locate your research data
  • Data repositories indexed at re3data can be filtered by PID systems, e.g. DOI, Handle, ARK, PURL

Data paper is an emerging scholarly genre that focuses on the description of research data objects. Unlike traditional research papers, data papers do not include any data analysis or results. Instead, they provide concise descriptions of published research datasets, including information about the methods used to collect and verify the data and the conditions of access to the data, which aims to make research data more reusable, discoverable, interpretable, and citable.

Publishing a data paper in a data journal can greatly improve the visibility and transparency of your research data. Here are the examples of some leading data journals:

Include a Data Availability Statement (DAS) in your research paper

Funders and publishers increasingly encourage or require authors to include a DAS in their manuscripts to indicate where, and under what conditions, the data associated with the paper can be accessed. Adding a DAS to your research paper not only helps you to comply with funder's and publisher's requirement, but also allows readers to easily locate your research data hosted in the repository.

Here are some major publishers' guideline on writing a DAS:

• Cambridge University Press
• PLOS ONE
• Springer Nature
• Taylor & Francis
• Wiley

Cite your research data

Don't forget also to cite your data in your publication to get credit for your work! See "Data Citation" to learn about how to cite data properly.