Data-Sharing and publication
Selecting data
The decision about what data for a project should be archived and for how long depends on the academic value of the data as well as on legal, regulatory and financial factors.
As a minimum, however, all the data on which a publication is based must be stored and the corresponding metadata must be published online.
The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and forschungsdaten.info list five steps for deciding what data to keep.
Finding a repository
Whenever possible, data should be deposited in subject-specific repositories. These are geared to the needs of the subject area, are familiar with specific data formats and often also offer subject-specific metadata.
Which data repositories can be used? A comprehensive list of data repositories is provided by the SNSF (the SNSF list is not exhaustive) and Scientific Data.
The best starting point for your search for a suitable repository is Research Data Repositories (re3data.org).
An institutional data repository (BORIS Portal Research Data, Research Project, Research Funding) has been officially launched. BORIS Portal allows you to archive and manage research data, to determine access options and manage rights, as well as to link project and researchers’ profiles, to make it accessible and clearly identifiable. Login to BORIS Portal research data, projects and fundings via your campus account.
Sharing
Sharing figure
Figshare - store, share and discover research.
Sharing methods
protocols.io A secure platform for the development and exchange of reproducible methods.
Choose a license
The Open Science Team at the University Library of Bern recommends licensing research data under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC 0) or the newest version of the Creative Commons Attribution International Public License CC BY licenses to allow maximal reusability. If data cannot be openly published due to ethical or legal reasons, metadata and supplementary material can be published under CC0 to fulfil funders' agencies' requirements.
The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) allows researchers to choose the best suitable license for the data based on the principle of reusability (e.g., SNSF Policy on Open Research Data).
The European Commission (EC) requires the latest available version of the CC BY or CC 0 or a licence with equivalent rights, following the principle “as open as possible as closed as necessary”. For details, please visit Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement from 15. December 2021, v.1.1, p. 96 and the EU's open science policy (link).
Persistent identifiers
As part of the FAIR principles, funding bodies require a unique identifier to be assigned to the published data. When depositing your data in BORIS, a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is assigned to each dataset. Click here for further information.
Publishing data
Research data generated and collected during a project can often be useful beyond its original purpose. It is therefore worthwhile making the data obtained publicly accessible. For this purpose it is important to ensure that your data is assigned persistent identifiers, good metadata is generated and sufficient documentation is provided to enable the data to be reused.
There are currently three ways of publishing research data.
Publication in a repository
Research data can be published in a disciplinary or a general repository. If possible, it is preferable to publish data in a disciplinary repository rather than in a generic one. Further information about selecting a suitable repository can be found in Finding a repository.
Publication in a data journal
Data papers published in data journals are documents that facilitate the dissemination and reuse of published data. These publications contain all information about data collection, methods, licenses and access rights along with information about potential reuse opportunities. The data itself is usually deposited in a repository.
The website of the Humboldt University of Berlin has a list of data journals.
Publication as a supplement to an article
Data can also be published as additional information for an article in a periodical. This is usually the data on which the publication is based which enables the findings to be understood. The data may either be deposited directly on the periodical's platform or in an external data repository.
Citing data
When citing data it is advisable to use either the standards applicable to the research field in question or the form suggested by the repository in which the dataset was deposited. If there are no particular standards or recommendations, Datacite recommends providing the following details as a minimum:
- Author
- Year of publication (of the dataset)
- Title
- Edition or version (optional)
- Publisher (for data this is usually the archive in which the data is stored)
- Resource type (optional)
- Persistent identifier (as a permanent linkable URL)
Open Source Software
Information and action guide for publishing open source software.