Sharing or archiving data means you make your research data available to others. Journals or funders may require you to give open access to your research data or at least share your data with other researchers upon request. In this way, they are stimulating the public availability of data and scripts. You can share your data by storing/archiving it in an openly available online depository or by making your dataset available upon request.
If you share your data openly and especially if you publish Open Access, there is a large likelihood that you will reach a broader audience (e.g. not only your fellow scientist but also practitioners, policymakers, journalists and the general public) and more people will cite your work. They are better able to validate your findings and more people can read your work. As such, you will have a larger audience and an audience with more confidence in your study. The subset of your audience that will eventually cite your work is also likely to be bigger.
For sharing your research data, several options are recommended:
See also UT Research Support on sharing and sending data (as well as storage). Furthermore, use this tool to find the best solution for storing, sharing, transferring or collaborating on research data, during the research.
At the UT:
- Group/share UT Network storage (P-drive)
- custom filesystem (network-share) on the UT central hard disks
- Lightweight database (no costs for < 5 GB data storage)
External (in the cloud):
- SURFdrive (secure file storage and/or share these with colleagues/students)
- Dataverse (also Archiving possible)
- OneDrive (Microsoft) (offers a GDPR compliant solution for having multiple access to your data and sharing with others)
- SURFfilesender (safe sharing/sending (also encrypted possible) of data between student-supervisor or UT employee-external partner)
- Tech4people server at BMS Lab
More info on storing & sharing your research data
For archiving your research data we recommend using the trusted repository:
DANS, for social sciences and humanities data. DANS prefers open data, but also offers restricted access (access is limited and can only be granted on request) and the possibility to place an embargo on your data (your data will become available after a set period of time, with a maximum of two years). DANS has the Data Seal of Approval.
Read the UT guidance on archiving research data.
Open Science Framework (OSF) is becoming more familiar in the social sciences. OSF is a free, open-source Web tool designed to help researchers collaboratively manage, store, and share their research process and files related to their research. Unlike the other repositories (such as DANS or Dataverse), which were built to simply house and share files once a research project is finished, OSF also allows researchers to store and interact with files during the research process and to preregister their work and upload preprints if they so desire. They have Guides and FAQ available. NOTE: by default OSF stores your data in the United States, choose Germany - Frankfurt as storage location instead, as US is not GDPR compliant.
We advise you to think about what data to share, with whom, how, when and for how long at the start of your research project and to capture these preferences in a Data Management Plan (DMP).
To write your DMP, please use the UT DMP-tool. The template in this tool is also accepted by NWO, ZonMw and EU.
As a guidance when writing a DMP you can follow the research data management course