Making research data available
PRACTICAL GUIDE 9
An important principle to observe is that data should be “as open as possible and as close as necessary”. In other words: data should be disseminated and be reusable. But under certain conditions access restrictions may be needed.
Why publish research data?
FOR JOINT TRANSPARENT RESEARCH
Publishing data at an international level enables all researchers to reuse datasets created by others. Available datasets can be used on a massive scale thanks to data mining technologies (text & data mining, TDM).
The costs for creating, collecting and processing data are high. Bad data practices in Europe cost approximately 10 billion Euros annually (European Commission, 2018).
Data created with public funds should be made publicly available according to the motto “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”. Opening up data increases public trust in science and its findings. In addition, open research enables participative science and Citizen Science.
If you post your data online it helps increase the visibility of your work and to be cited more frequently. According to a study published in PLOS ONE, the dissemination of data linked to a publication increases the number of citations for the article by 25 per cent (Colavizza, Hrynaszkiewicz, Staden et al., 2020).
Making your data available ensures better transparency for research and gives more plausibility and reproducibility to your published findings. Data provision can thus be seen as a confirmation of good scientific practice.
Good luck with your research!
Date: March 2021
Questions, comments and notes are welcome at open-science@zbw.eu