Research Data

Why share research data?

Research information belongs to everybody. Research information contains both research publications and data. Open science benefits individual researchers, science communities, funders as well as the entire society.

Benefits for the researcher

• Open publications are cited more often. Publications that contain also the background data of the research are cited more often than publications whose background data is not open (see e.g. Piwowar and Vision's article "Data reuse and the open data citation advantage").
• The researcher receives feedback for their data from other researchers more easily.

Benefits for the scientific community

• Use of open, existing data speeds up and enhances research. Previously collected data can be reused.
• Sharing data guarantees the durability of the data after individual research projects are completed.
• Open and easy availability improves how innovative the research is, networking within and between disciplines and researcher recognition.
• Open data can evoke new discussion or research paths.

Benefits for funders

• It is easier to direct resources to appropriate targets when the funder is aware of what data already exists.
• If forgery or plagiarism is suspected, data is available for evaluation.
• In addition to scientific publications, funders can take into account the researcher's merits in producing data.

• Take the sharing of data into consideration already at the beginning of the research project. Drafting a data management plan helps in this. More information can be found on the data management planning tab of this guide.
• Consider the legal and ethical issues related to the research at the beginning of project. Discuss and agree within the research group who owns the data. If necessary, you can ask for assistance from the legal unit in the Research Services. At the University of Turku, you can contact the lawyers at the Research Services by sending email to legal@utu.fi. The goal should be that the data can be shared with the Creative Commons BY 4.0 licence recommended by the Open Science and Research Initiative. More information on the Legal Issues tab.
• Consider the file formats and naming practices.
• Consider where you will store the research data after the research process ends.

High-quality metadata is like a business card for research and the researcher. It improves the the data’s discoverability via search engines. Metadata always contains the data's

• title
• time of production
• producer
• format
• topic
• right of use.

Metadata can also include explanations of code, information on data analysis as well as on the research project and producers of the data. There are several different standards for metadata, depending on the file format and field of research:

• Disciplinary Metadata / Digital Curation Centre DCC
• Metadata Standards Catalog / Research Data Alliance RDA
• General Research Data  / Digital Curation Centre DCC

Tools for creating and managing metadata:

• Metadata tools  / Standford University Library
• Metadata - Index of Tools / Research Data Alliance RDA
• Curation Tools and Services / ICPSR

More information can also be found in the Finnish Social Science Data Archive Handbook and in the university of Helsinki's guide "Making a research project understandable". MIT Libraries has also collected instructions on creating metadata.

Research data or metadata can be published in different ways:

1. Data archives make it possible to also open data. Further information on data storage and  a list compiled by the IT Services (in Finnish) are available on the University’s web and intranet pages.
2. In order to open the data, it can also be shared in so-called data journals. The Finnish Committee for Research Data keeps a list of online academic data journals.
3. In order to open metadata, use Qvain service. Qvain is a tool to create and publish the metadata for your research dataset. 
4. Data or metadata can be published also on the website of the research project

Finnish funders

• Research Council of Finland
• Business Finland

International funders

• European Research Council
• Horizon Europe
• WellComeTrust
• You can search for information on different funders' policies on open research in the Sherpa/Juliet database.

Open notebook science means that a research project is made public already when it is being conducted. Open research or laboratory notebooks detail the different phases of data collection, measurements etc. The goal is to ensure the transparency of research.

• Definition of open notebook science (Wikipedia)
• Example: Open research notebooks in Zenodo

Ordinary web sites or different kinds of social media services can be used as practical tools. Documents can be shared in different cloud services, e.g. with Seafile cloud service. Instructions available on the IT Services of the University of Turku.