Archiving and Sharing
The sustainable storage, archiving, and (ideally) accessibility of relevant research data even after project completion must be prepared at an early stage. The DFG’s recommendations for safeguarding good scientific practice as well as the statutes for safeguarding good scientific practice (GWP statutes) of Freie Universität Berlin stipulate a retention of research data for an appropriate period of time – depending on the standard practices in a specific subject area – usually at least ten years. In addition, the publication of research data is recommended, not only to ensure the reproducibility of research results, but also to enable follow-up research.
The DFG refers to a retention period of usually 10 years after the completion of a project. The archiving of data that is not to be published can be carried out by the central archiving service of ZEDAT.
Before publishing data, all rights must be clarified, including rights connected with the use of third-party materials and data requiring special protection.
For data that cannot be made freely accessible, e.g., due to privacy rights, some repositories offer a staggered rights and access system. In addition, publication is possible at a later date (embargo period). Data that cannot be published should be archived.
Easy retrieval and citation of research data is ensured by persistent identification (persistent identifier); many repositories offer this as an automated service. To ensure the easy reuse of data, open data formats and open licensing are appropriate.
Possible forms of publication:
- Generic or subject-specific repositories, data centers
- Refubium, the repository of Freie Universität Berlin
- Journals ("enhanced publication")
Reference systems such as re3data are a helpful resource when searching for a suitable repository as well as for specific data sets. Zenodo and EUDAT - B2SHARE are examples of generic repositories. An overview of quality-assured data journals is provided by forschungsdaten.org.
Related Links
- Refubium: The repository of Freie Universität Berlin
- Refubium: Horizon-Europe-Criteria for Trusted Repositories
- re3data
- Zenodo
- EUDAT – B2SHARE
- List of data journals on forschungsdaten.org (German only)
A license is a right of use established by a contractual agreement. It grants various rights of use, e.g., copying, saving, linking, and publishing data, in the context of copyrighted works. The use of free licenses (CC-0, CC-BY) is recommended, which allow the work to be used free of charge and thus enable unrestricted access to your research results.
This page was last edited on 15 September 2023. Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.