What do I need to consider before sharing my research data?
Deakin University's Publication and Dissemination of Research Procedure (clause 17) supports the dissemination of research data as freely as practicable, subject to privacy, contractual and intellectual property requirements.
In addition, Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (2018) states that “Research data should be made available for use by other researchers unless prevented by ethical, privacy or confidentiality matters” (clause 2.5.2).
Do I have the right to share the research data?
- For more information about copyright and research data, see the copyright wiki.
- For questions of IP, contact Deakin Research Commercial .
Future publications
You may wish to only publish and share your data after you have had the opportunity to publish results from it first. Consider releasing datasets or variables incrementally with publications.
Consent
Planning to publish and share data from the outset of a project makes it easier to obtain consent for this use from your participants. However, if your data relating to humans is not identifiable or sensitive, you may be able to publish it, if this does not contradict any assurances provided to your participants.
Complex laws and guidelines govern access to personal information. Contact an Ethics Advisor to discuss the proposed access and get advice.
Personal and sensitive information
It is possible to provide only a metadata record of your dataset. You don’t have to make the data itself accessible. You can provide contact details and require researchers interested in the data to contact you to discuss potential data sharing.
Do you have questions about publishing, reusing, or sharing your data, and the ethics approval change process? First check the appropriate section of Human Research Ethics Guidelines.
Find out more in the ANDS Guide to publishing and sharing sensitive data.
Complex laws and guidelines govern access to personal information. Contact an Ethics Advisor to discuss the proposed access and get advice.
Describing your research data
To both publish and find datasets, good labelling of information is critical. Metadata fields are used to describe your data.
Examples of metadata fields for a dataset include:
- Name of the data collection
- Creator(s)
- Date completed
- Description of resource
- Geographic area (subject)
- Summary
- Language
- Copyright notice
- Access conditions
- DOI
- Persistent URL
Often a separate file, such as a readme text file, explains and describes other elements such as the structure of the data, any special software required, naming conventions, and any other information required for a user to understand the data.
Describing your research data in the University's data store makes it discoverable through other repositories such as Research Data Australia (RDA), and through search engines such as Google Scholar. The online submission tool Deakin Research Data Footprints will guide you through the process of creating a record for your data, and if applicable, linking to the open access dataset itself.
Shared data is only useful if others can understand it! For detailed information, see the ANDS Guide for Metadata.
Licensing and access conditions
You must apply a license to any data that you make available. This ensures that terms and conditions of reuse are clear. Examples of licenses include:
See more information about copyright and licensing.
Pending any agreements with copyright owners of the data, you can also choose to apply access conditions, for example, requiring researchers to:
- Contact you directly for approval and access, if you own the data
- Provide details about how they will use the data
- Pay a fee for access.