Thing 5: Data sharing

Overview

Teaching: 0 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• How can research data be shared?

• What makes a good data repository?

Objectives

• Getting started looks at sharing data via access methods: Open, Shared and Closed Data

• Learn more explores data sharing trends of some countries and by disciplines

• Challenge me dips into ensuring that data can be shared for a long time via some preservation tools.

Getting started: Access to research data

Introducing open, shared and closed data.

When we explored Research Data Australia in Thing 4, you may have noticed that not all the data described was available for immediate access. This activity explains why different datasets may have different access conditions.

Open / Shared / Closed

1. Watch this 2.5 minute video from the Open Data Institute titled Open/Closed/Shared: the world of data.
2. Now open this page to see a more in-depth view of why data is sometimes open, shared or closed.
3. If you have time, go to Research Data Australia and try searching for data that is ‘open’. Hint: Look for the option to limit your search to data that is Publicly accessible online.

More open data

Why isn’t more data publicly accessible or more ‘open’?

Learn more: Data sharing practices

Repositories are one means by which research data may be shared but in order to get data into repositories, research teams must be willing to publish their data: there are huge differences between data sharing practices by country and by discipline.

Data Sharing Practices

1. Take a look at this 2014 infographic from Wiley titled Research Data Sharing Insights [PDF, 2.08MB]
2. It provides a succinct overview of current data sharing practice and perceptions.
3. Now look closely at the sections titled ‘Global Data Sharing Trends’ and ‘Data Sharing By Discipline’.

Differences in Practices

Why do you think there are differences between disciplines and countries - what changes to these statistics would you expect between 2014 and now?

Challenge me: Tools to preserve research data

Data sharing is only a long term prospect if repositories have preservation as part of their workflows and procedures.

Community Owned digital Preservation Tool Registry (COPTR) describes tools useful for long term digital preservation and acts primarily as a finding and evaluation tool to help practitioners find the tools they need to preserve digital data.

COPTR Exploration

1. Go to the COPTR site and pick a discipline you are familiar with and see what tools are available to support long term data sharing of datasets.
2. Try out one of the tools in COPTR to see how it works

Using Preservation Tools

Have you, or would you, use any of these tools? How feasible it is to expect such preservation tools to be widely used?

Key Points

• First key point.