It is common scholarly practice to publish results of research, and it is becoming increasingly more important to share the underlying data. Data sharing allows for the replicability and verification of experimental findings and allow for reuse in new and unexpected ways. Sharing your data may also increase the impact of your research.
There are several options for sharing your data, each with pros and cons:
- Post data on an individual or project web site. This is an easy option, but requires the creator to maintain the website which is not a reliably sustainable option.
- Submit data as a supplement to a published journal article. This is becoming a more routine part of the publishing process, but could limit access for those who do not subscribe to a particular journal.
- Submit data to a disciplinary repository. This is a great way to discover data sets in a specific disciplines or research communities but, not all disciplinary repositories guarantee long-term preservation.
- Submit data to an institutional data repository, such as Deep Blue Data, U-M Library’s data repository. Institutional repositories have a high degree of stability, but do not focus in a specific discipline.
Love Your Data Week is a perfect opportunity to celebrate the beta launch of Deep Blue Data, coming later this month! Deep Blue, U-M Library’s service for digital deposit, is expanding to include additional services optimized for data. Deep Blue Data helps researchers comply with funding agency and publisher requirements as well as gain visibility and promote scholarship through data sharing by:
- Providing a means to publish research data
- Ensuring that data are preserved for future use
- Enabling data to be cited by assigning a Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
If you really love your data, share it! Contact your subject librarian or Research Data Services for information about when, where, or how to share your data.