Data publishing has been gaining momentum, due to an increasing awareness of the benefits in publishing and re-using data, alongside the growing requirements of funding bodies that data be made publicly available. By publishing your research data you can:

• ensure the replication and verification of work;
• enable formal and measureable recognition of data as a research output;
• reduce the duplication of data collection;
• allow the re-use of data in multi- and interdisciplinary research;
• ensure greater transparency in the research process.
• Achieve maximum returns on investment in research

In Australia the publishing of research data is encouraged by the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. It states that research data should be made available for use by other researchers unless it is prevented by ethical, privacy or confidentiality matters. Increasingly, funding agencies are placing the onus on researchers to publish research data that has been collected using public funds.

Data Publishing

• There are a number of ways to publish your research data. Researchers can deposit their data into an institutional repository. The UQ Library is soon launching a new service, with UQ eSpace accepting data. Alternatively, there are many discipline specific data repositories that will accept research data, and make it available or discoverable to other researchers.

Data Licensing

• One of the common barriers to publishing research data is concerns about attribution and recognition of data and researchers. These concerns can be addressed through the implementation of DOI's (or persistent identifiers) for datasets at the time they are published or deposited into a repository, allowing the data to be correctly cited. Researchers can also apply Creative Commons licensing to their data to ensure that any future use or reuse of that data is appropriate and correctly cited.

The most recent newsletter from TERN discusses some of the initiatives that are in place to remove the barriers to data publishing.

Many researchers at UQ are already publishing their data. If you would like to publish your research data, the UQ Library's Research Data Management team can assist you.

The National Academies Press has published a compendium of academic thinking about sharing academic data, "The Future of Scientific Knowledge Discovery in Open Networked Environments: Summary of a Workshop." It is available to download free as a PDF.

David Wojick, writing for the scholarly kitchen, notes that while the word "data" is not in the title, it occurs over 1,200 times in the report.

The report is largely an exercise in envisioning the possible opportunities for scientific discovery presented by extensive data sharing, based on large-scale, present-day examples. Read his full article here.

The Denton Declaration: an Open Data Manifesto, is the latest announcement on the growing debate on open data.

The declaration includes:

• Open access to research data is critical for advancing science, scholarship, and society.
• Research data, when repurposed, has an accretive value.
• Publicly funded research should be publicly available for public good.
• Transparency in research is essential to sustain the public trust.
• The validation of research data by the peer community is an essential function of the responsible conduct of research.
• Managing research data is the responsibility of a broad community of stakeholders including researchers, funders, institutions, libraries, archivists, and the public.

To read further, go to Open Access@UNT