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Sharing data

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Research data are valuable and sharing them will increase their discoverability and preserve them for future reuse. Sharing data also validates your research findings and can lead to opportunities for collaboration.

Good research data management ultimately ensures that the data you share is findable, accessible, and reusable by others.

  • which data do i share?

    Not all the data you produce as part of your research needs to be shared.

    The University’s Research Data Management Policy, as well as many funders’ policies, require data underpinning a research output or of long-term value to be made available in order to maximise the value of the results and preserve them for future use and reuse.

    You should consider sharing data that:

    • Are unique
    • Cannot be easily reproduced
    • Are scientifically, socially, or culturally significant
    • Are of interest to others or have a high reuse potential
    • Substantiate research publications and findings
    • Have legal or contractual reasons to be preserved 

    Personal data must be anonymised before it can be shared.

    For more strategies on making sensitive data available, see Sensitive Data.

    Where data cannot be shared at all, the University’s Research Data Management Policy still requires a metadata record to be created in e-space.

  • where do i share my data?

    You can share your research data via the Manchester Met’s open access research repository e-space. This makes your data discoverable and citable through the creation of a DOI.

Deposit data

deposit data in
e-space

Share your research data

deposit
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find data in
e-space

Browse the research repository

Find
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Best practice for sharing data

It is important that the data you share is findable, accessible, and reusable. Ensuring your data is in a standardised format, given contextual information, and assigned a licence all ensure the data can be reused appropriately. See also Sensitive Data

  • README file

    Provide access information in the form of README file describing the data including:

    • List of files included in the dataset
    • Tools or software needed to access the data
    • Underlying publications
    • Any other information necessary for understanding or using the data

  • Licences

    It’s important to license the data you share since this will help others understand how to reuse it. Choose an open licence such as those developed by Creative Commons or Open Data Commons because these are widely used and supported. 

    In some cases, it may be appropriate to provide multiple licenses to various parts of the data such as the source code or a database. 

    Open Data Commons Guide to Open Data Licensing

    Data Curation Centre guide on How to License Research Data

    EDUAT Licence Selector Tool

  • Embargoes

    There are valid reasons for restricting access to your data permanently or for a period of time. You can embargo your data to publish your findings, patent a result, or protect confidentiality. 

  • Data access statements

    Data access statements or data availability statements provide information about the data such as where the data can be found, conditions of access, and persistent identifiers. You should provide a data access statement on all publications even if no data is associated with it

    Examples of data access statements include:

    Openly available data

    Data supporting this publication are openly available from Manchester Metropolitan University’s research repository: [DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER].

    All data accompanying this publication are available within the publication.

    All data underlying this study are cited in the reference section of this publication.

    Additional research data supporting this publication are available as supplementary files [LINK].

    Embargoed data

    Supporting data will be available from Manchester Met’s research repository: [DOI] after a 12 month embargo period from the date of data collection to allow for the publication of research findings.

    Ethical or access restrictions

    Owing to [GIVE REASONS DATA CANNOT BE SHARED], the data underlying this publication cannot be made openly available. Further information, including conditions for access, can be found at Manchester Met’s research repository: [DOI].

    Data supporting this publication are available from [NAME OF REPOSITORY] at [DOI OR URL]. Access to the data is subject to approval and a data sharing agreement due to [GIVE REASONS WHY DATA ACCESS IS RESTRICTED].

    Secondary analysis

    This study was a re-analysis of existing data that is publicly available from [REPOSITORY NAME] at [DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER].

    The raw data used in this study used third party data under copyright and cannot be shared. Requests to access the data should be directed to [THIRD PARTY] at [URL/CONTACT DETAILS].

    No new data

    No new data were generated or analysed during this study.

  • Data citation

    Like publications, the use of datasets must be attributed and cited. It is good practice to also include a citation to your data so others cite it correctly.

    Common elements include:

    • Author(s) or creator(s) of the data
    • Publication date
    • Title of dataset
    • Resource type
    • Version
    • Publisher
    • Persistent identifier such as a DOI or URL

    Examples of data citations are:

    • Creator (Publication date). Title. Publisher. Identifier
    • Creator (Publication date). Title. Version. Publisher. [Resource Type]. Identifier

    See the UK Data Service How to Cite Data for more examples.

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