Research data publishing
Funders and publishers increasingly expect researchers to publish the data associated with their research. Sharing data publicly maximises potential benefits to the research community by enabling other researchers to find and reuse your data. It also enhances your profile and provides opportunities for future research collaborations.
Why publish your research data
Visibility and credit
Data publishing can enhance your profile as a researcher by making your research more discoverable. Publication allows other researchers to find, use and cite your work,and allows you to track the impact of your research. There is evidence to suggest that publications with open datasets attract more citations.¹
Transparency and robustness
Data publication enables other researchers to reproduce your research to verify findings. This promotes transparency and increases the robustness of the scholarly record.
Publisher and funder requirements
Funders and publishers increasingly require publication of datasets associated with your research. Many publishers now also require researchers share their data as part of the peer review process.
1. Giovanni Colavizza et al, "The citation advantage of linking publications to research data," PLOS One (2020) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230416
Preparing your data for publication
To maximise discovery and reuse you should employ best practices in preparing and publishing your data set to make it Findable, Accessible, Reusable and Discoverable (FAIR).
Before publishing ensure you:
More information on data classification, privacy and sensitivity can be found at:
Research Data Rights Management Guide
Handling Sensitive Data
Data Sensitivity & Classification
ORCID is a unique, persistent identifier for researchers that helps distinguish your research activities and outputs from those of other researchers with similar names to ensure you get credit for your work.
Make sure you acknowledge your institution when publishing. A ROR from the Research Organization Registry is a useful PID for identifying universities and other research institutions.
UNSWorks will automatically assign a DOI if your dataset does not already have one and will populate your ORCID from your ROS profile.
Open licenses provide the opportunity for sharing and reusing data – best practice is to make your data as open as possible and only as closed as necessary. More details on copyright and licensing can be found in the Copyright Guide.
Where to publish your data
Dedicated data repositories and archives are the best option for publishing your research. These platforms ensure long term availability of your data and provide services including DOI minting and standard reuse licences. Data journals are also an option available to researchers. When planning to publish your data its important you evaluate platforms to determine whether they are suitable for your research.
Benefits of the repository include:
- Support for Creative Commons Licenses
- Automated DOI assignment
- Automated publication to Research Data Australia (RDA)
- Embargo functionality
- Integration with InfoEd grants
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Platform | |||
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File limit |
300GB via UI >300GB by arrangement |
50GB via UI >50GB possible by arrangement |
2.5GB per file 1TB total per user |
5GB per file (larger files can be stored in add on services) |
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Cost |
No cost (for UNSW staff) |
No cost | No cost | No cost |
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Versioning
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Y | Y | Y | Y |
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DOI minting
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Y | Y | Y | Y |
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Usage statistics
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Y | Y | ||
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Closed/restricted files permitted
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Private permitted for period of peer review | Y | Y | Y |
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Storage location
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USA | CERN Data Store | USA | Australian data centre can be selected |
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File formats
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Any |
Any |
Any | Any |
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Public API
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Y | Y | Y | |
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Integrations
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GitHub | GitHub |
Amazon S3, Bitbucket, Box, Dataverse, Dropbox, Figshare, GitHub, GitLab, Google Drive, OneDrive and ownCloud |
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Licence
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CC0 only | See Conformant licences and SPDX licences | CC0, custom licence terms possible | Any |
| Restrictions |
No personal health information No sensitive data |
Sensitive data must be anonymised | No sensitive data | Personal health information data must be stored with a third party service |
Need help?
Contact your Faculty Outreach Librarian
Research Data Management
For information on creating a research data management plan see Research Data Management Overview.