Sharing data

Research data are a valuable resource worth preserving and sharing.

Research data that is well-documented and curated has value to the University now and in the future. Such data is worth the cost of storage, preservation and management for the future.

(Paul Harrison, PVC Research and Innovation)

When you get to the end of your research project, there are several things you will need to do

  • selecting the research data you will want or need to keep and destroy the rest
  • preserving the research data by depositing them in an institutional repository or a data archive
  • publishing those data in the repository or archive and share them with others, with access restrictions if appropriate

 
There is also a checklist for What should I do when I publish a paper, or when I am at the end of my project?

Research data are a valuable resource. It is University policy that all research data — both digital and analogue — should be kept for a minimum of 10 years after completion of the project. For research funded by the Medical Research Council this may be considerably longer. These data are required to substantiate any research findings that are published or reported, so that your peers may be able to validate the findings. Sharing research outcomes also enables future researchers to open up new lines of inquiry or develop new insights based on your data, without the duplication of effort that would be needed to collect the data again, if re-collecting the same data would be feasible or possible in the first place. Increasingly, research funders encourage the sharing of data.