Research Data Management (RDM): Preserve & Share

Research data is a valuable resource and sharing data after a project completes has many benefits, including:

• creating potential for new collaborations
• encouraging transparency in research practices
• reducing the cost of further data collection

All research data you share must conform to the University’s Research Code of Practice. Guidelines and support on ethics can be found from Research and Impact Services. This section will help you with:

• Selecting data for long term curation
• Choosing a data service for your data
• Licenses for research data
• Data access statements

The Digital Curation Centre has a list of research funder requirements on how long research data should be stored after the end of the project. If your funder is not on this list please use JISC's Open Policy Finder to check if your funder has any requirements for research data.

The University of Warwick’s Research Data Management Policy is designed to allow all Warwick researchers to be compliant with all known funder requirements. It states that

"9. Data must be retained intact in an appropriate format and storage facility, normally for a period of at least 10 years from the date of any publication which is based upon it. Where specific regulations with regard to data retention apply, e.g., from funders, these regulations should prevail, particularly where the required retention period is longer than the University requires."

Once you’ve decided what data you need to keep in the long term you will need to choose where to deposit this data to make it available.

The advantages of depositing your data with a repository include:

• a permanent public record will be created to enhance the discoverability of your data
• your data will be assigned a persistent identifier (e.g. DOI) making it easier for you and others to cite your data in publications
• compliance with funder, journal and/or institutional data policies

Subject specific repositories have expertise and the resources to manage specific types of data. You can search for a repository by subject using the Registry of Research Data Repositories.

Your funder may also support or recommend a particular repository, for example:

• UK Data Service (ESRC)
• environmental data centres (NERC)
• Wellcome approved data repositories (Wellcome)

Some publishers have also published lists of recommended data repositories:

• PLOS
• Royal Society
• Springer-Nature

If no discipline-specific repository or community resource is available, you can find a list of recognised general-purpose data repositories on the Wellcome website.

Licensing allows you to specify what people can and cannot do with your data. It makes clear how you intend others to reuse or share your data. The permissions you give to others will come in the form of a copyright licence. Your funder may require certain conditions for access and reuse of your data.

If you don't use a licence, it won’t be clear how you intend your work to be reused.

Applying a licence makes your intent clear and places the obligation to respect your wishes and rights on the user.

It is best to have an idea which license you plan to use before you start collecting data. This can help in planning consent requests from research participants.

There are specialist data licenses and the tools below can help you choose the most appropriate licence for your data/software.

• Creative Commons licenses 
• Choose an open source license
• License Selector

Sometimes known as Data Availability Statements, DASs are included in publications to describe where the data associated with the paper is available, and under what conditions the data can be accessed. They are required by many funders and scientific journals as well as the UKRI Common Principles on Data Policy.

The aim of the data access statement is to promote the discoverability of research data that has been created in the life of a project. Some publishers no longer allow authors to use the phrase 'data are available upon reasonable request'.

What to include

Examples of data access statements are provided below, but your statement should typically include:

• where the data can be accessed (preferably a data repository)
• a persistent identifier, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or accession number, or a link to a permanent record for the dataset
• details of any restrictions on accessing the data and a justifiable explanation (e.g. for ethical, legal or commercial reasons)

Example of DASs

Openly available data

All data underpinning this publication are openly available from [REPOSITORY NAME] at [DOI, ACCESSION NUMBER OR URL].

Embargoed data

"All data underpinning this publication will be available from [REPOSITORY NAME] at [DOI, ACCESSION NUMBER OR URL] from [date] onwards, following the cessation of an embargo period."

Restricted data

"Due to ethical/commercial issues, data underpinning this publication cannot be made openly available. Further information about the data and conditions for access are available from Gabriel Clarke at [DOI, ACCESSION NUMBER OR URL] Access to the data is subject to approval due to (GIVE REASONS WHY ACCESS TO THE DATA IS RESTRICTED).”

Physical data

"Physical data supporting this publication are stored by the University of Warwick. Details of the data and how it can be accessed are available from [REPOSITORY NAME] at [DOI, ACCESSION NUMBER OR URL].

Secondary data

"Pre-existing data underpinning this publication are available from [REPOSITORY NAME] at [DOI, ACCESSION NUMBER OR URL] Further information about data processing, and additional new supporting data are available from Gabriel Clarke at [DOI, ACCESSION NUMBER OR URL].

No new data created

"No new data were created during this study.”

No data

"This work is entirely theoretical, there is no data underpinning this publication."

Not all research data is suitable for long term preservation. The DCC has created a comprehensive guide to appraising and selecting data for preservation - five steps to decide what data to keep; and you may wish to seek individual guidance offered by your research funder.

Where appropriate, it is good practice to make your research data available to a wider audience, but in some cases it is necessary to restrict access to research data for security, confidentiality or commercial reasons. This is commonly described as 'as open as possible, as closed as necessary'. For example:

• the data is covered by GDPR and is subject to the consent granted by the participants to whom it relates

• the data has been obtained under a non-disclosure agreement from a partner

• access to the data has been purchased from a commercial provider

• the data may lead to a commercial opportunity/patent

Appropriate safeguards need to be in place before sensitive or confidential data can be shared. Some repositories provide a facility to control access to data. The OSF provides a list of repositories that provide restricted access options. You can also search the Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data) using the “restricted access” filter.