Scholarly Communications

Open Data is research data that can be used, reused, and redistributed freely by anyone—subject at most to the requirement to attribute and share alike.

"Good open data:

• can be linked to, so that it can be easily shared and talked about

• is available in a standard, structured format, so that it can be easily processed

• has guaranteed availability and consistency over time, so that others can rely on it

• is traceable, through any processing, right back to where it originates, so others can work out whether to trust it"

-The Open Data Institute

Read Gewin, V. (2016). Data sharing: An open mind on open data. Nature, 529(7584), 117-119.

For guidance on data management planning, CUNY's guide covers

• Formatting & organizing your data
• Documenting your data effectively
• Backing up and securing your data
• Sharing & archiving your data
• Granting requirements for data management

SPARC has created a guide to federal data sharing requirements by specific government agency. SPARC describes the guide as "a community resource for tracking, comparing, and understanding current U.S. federal funder research data sharing policies. Originally completed by SPARC & Johns Hopkins University Libraries in 2016, the content of this resource was updated by RDAP and SPARC in 2021."

4 Steps - from the Open Data Handbook

(1) Choose your dataset(s).

Being informed on best practices helps

• Open Data principles from Project Open Data 
• Policy recommendations for Open Access to Research Data in Europe from RECODE Project
• Principles of Data Policy from Research Councils UK

(2) Apply an open license.

These links will help you choose a license.

• http://opendatacommons.org/guide/
• http://opendefinition.org/licenses/
• https://project-open-data.cio.gov/open-licenses/

(3 & 4) Make data available. Make data discoverable.

-Mantra: keep it simple, move fast, be pragmatic-

Use data repositories

• Registry of Research Data Repositories
• Open Science framework
• arXiv.org
• datahub
• Zenodo
• List of Social Science data repositories

Open Data Hackathons How To Guide

Open Notebook Science

Teaching integrity in empirical research (TIER) - best practices for data management / sharing