Responsible preservation of research data is part of the objectives of open science, to which the University of Helsinki is also committed. The principles of open science include making research data as open as possible and as closed as necessary. Researchers, the research community and society benefit from the fact that once collected, the data can be used in as many ways as possible.
If your research data does not contain sensitive data or personal data covered by the GDPR, we recommend that you publish the data in a suitable retention service, i.e. a data repository. Most repositories allow you to choose whether the data is fully open (directly downloadable from the website) or whether it can be requested from the original researcher, for example, in exchange for a research plan (restricted access). It is also often possible to set an embargo on the data for a justified reason.
If your data contains sensitive information and it is not possible, for example, to make it anonymous, there is often no suitable repository for it. However, you can always publish the metadata of your data - this also complies with the FAIR principles that open science and donors require to follow.
By submitting your research metadata to Data catalogue, you will receive a DOI for citation.
Generally, choose a repository as follows:
As there are so many options, we are happy to help you choose the right retention service.
We recommend that you take care of documenting your research from the start: it is very difficult to remember the details afterwards. Good research data management includes documentation as part of the research. This will help you, for example, if you need to review analyses done earlier. If the data can be made available to other researchers, a careful description will help them understand what your data is about and what has been done to it.
When to publish the descriptive information (metadata) depends somewhat on your own needs. In general, however, we recommend that you describe your data at least at the end of your research project. For example, you can do this at the same time as you self-archive the research articles.
The DOI identifier comes from the repository where the data is published. So make sure that the repository you choose assigns DOIs to research data. Alternatively, you can describe your data in Data catalogue and obtain a DOI for the metadata this way.
If the data are published in a data repository, the data will be assigned a DOI. If the data are described, for example, in Data catalogue (in which case the data itself is not published), a DOI is assigned to the data description (i.e. metadata).
Databank is a preservation service provided by the University of Helsinki, which offers a 5-15 year retention period for data produced within the university that cannot be stored in any other repository. Before depositing, the data are curated, i.e. their quality and suitability for preservation are checked. The data are stored in Databank in a frozen form, i.e. their content cannot be edited in the service.
This is not necessary. If the data is suitable for Zenodo, it should not be stored in Databank. Databank is designed for data that has no other suitable repostory options. Zenodo offers a 25-year retention period and direct access to the data for other users. From Zenodo, the metadata of the data are automatically transferred to Data catalogue, as long as the University of Helsinki is added as the affiliation organization.
Great that you are thinking about this! We'll help you find the best option for your data. Please contact us by email: datasupport@helsinki.fi. We usually respond within a couple of days. See also What service does the University of Helsinki recommend for publishing research data?
If the publisher requires the data to be published, but the size of the data exceeds the size limits set by the repositories, it cannot be opened as a whole. One possibility is to create a representative subset of the data that can be opened in the repository. Another possibility is to describe the data as a whole in Data catalogue, which will provide a DOI for the metadata of the data and contact details from which the dataset can be requested if desired. The metadata of the research article can be cited from the research article using this DOI. In both cases, the Data availability statement section of the article should include the reason why the data could not be fully opened and the ways (subsection creation/metadata opening) by which this obstacle was worked around.
In some cases, the data creator information is not wanted to be public information. This is usually due to the heated public debate surrounding the research topic. Such topics may include animal testing, abortion, nutrition, etc. In such cases, the creator of the research data may be anonymous in Data catalogue. It is done like this:
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Please email datasupport@helsinki.fi with the correct creators of the data. Data Support will keep a record of these and contact the data creators if there are any relevant queries about the data.