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Open Research

This guide provides information and how-to advice on a number of different ways you can embed open practices into your research.
Making data open via melbourne.figshare.com

 

The University has a data repository where you can publish your data: melbourne.figshare.com. You can access melbourne.figshare.com using your University credentials.

Data published in melbourne.figshare.com can be shared at the appropriate level of openness:

  • Public - for data that can be shared openly.
  • Temporarily embargoed - for data that will be shared openly in the future, but cannot be shared openly at the present time.
  • Permanently embargoed - for data that cannot itself be shared publicly online, but information about the data can be, either to facilitate meditated access to the dataset, or so the data can be cited.
  • Private link - for data that are currently under a permanent or temporary embargo, but need to be shared privately with a peer reviewer or collaborator.

You can contact the Digital Stewardship (Research) team for support with publishing your data with melbourne.figshare.com.

Making data open via a discipline repository

 

It may be most strategic for you to publish your data in a discipline-specific data repository, where it will be found by other researchers in your field. You may already be aware of prominent data repositories in your area of study. Your colleagues or your supervisor might also be able to point you towards suitable repositories. Another method of finding suitable discipline-specific repositories is by consulting a registry of data repositories such as re3data.org or the FAIRsharing catalogue of databases.

Making data open via a general repository

 

There are also several general repositories where you can create an account for free and deposit research data from any discipline. These include

Promoting open data via a journal

You may also want to promote your data by publishing a data paper in a data journal. Data papers provide an opportunity for you to describe your dataset in detail and have your work peer-reviewed. Here are some methods of finding data journals:

Data citation

Data can be cited, just like any other research output. The citation format recommended by DataCite is:

Creator (PublicationYear). Title. Version. Publisher. ResourceType. Identifier

Version and ResourceType are optional properties. The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) provide an example of a data citation using this format.

The Identifier property is most commonly a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). You will receive a DOI for your data, so that it can be cited, when you deposit it with most data repositories, including melbourne.figshare.com.