Here you can find out the benefits of publishing research data, how you can make a useful selection of the research data to be published, which legal aspects may need to be considered, which licences are available to you and which file formats are particularly suitable for publication.
There is no right answer to this question. The DFG defines research data in its "Guidelines for the Handling of Research Data" as follows:
"Research data includes measurement data, laboratory values, audiovisual information, texts, survey data, objects from collections or samples that are generated, developed or analysed in the course of scientific work. Methodological test procedures such as questionnaires, software and simulations can also represent key results of scientific research and should therefore also be categorised as research data"
(DFG: Leitlinien zum Umgang mit Forschungsdaten. [17.10.2023].)
Publishing research data according to the FAIR principles has many advantages:
- the research data publication counts as an independent publication and can be permanently cited via DOI
- the research data is easier to find thanks to cataloguing and search engine indexing
- research results become more visible through the publication of data and their citation
- Studies indicate a citation advantage for publications that provide a DOI to the underlying and openly accessible research data in the text compared to publications that do not. (Pimowar & Vision 2013, Henneken & Accomazzi 2011, Colavizza et al. 2020 )
- the research data published in the LUH text repository is archived long-term by the TIB.
- Publicly accessible data can inspire new or complementary hypotheses.
- New co-operations can arise.
In addition, you fulfil relevant requirements, such as the DFG's guidelines for safeguarding good research practice, the guidelines for handling research data at LUH and, if applicable, the funding conditions of third-party funding bodies (further information can be found on the pages of the Research Data Service Team).
Data protection and copyright aspects in particular need to be considered in this question: Is the research data personal data? Who owns the data if I collect it during working hours? Does it contain data created or provided by third parties, e.g. co-operation partners?
The website forschungsdaten.info has created a decision-making aid for these questions, which can serve as an initial guide. In case of doubt, however, legal advice is always advisable!
Further information, such as contact persons, handouts and FAQs, can be found on the website of the Research Data Service Team. You are also welcome to contact the service team directly.
If no legal or ethical reasons (see also "What legal aspects should be considered when publishing research data?") contradict this, all research data that forms the basis of a publication (dissertation, habilitation thesis, paper, etc.) should be published. The same applies to data that can only be collected under very uneconomical circumstances or not at all.
In the case of particularly large amounts of data, you should consider whether the data can be reproduced at a reasonable cost (time, money, material and human resources). In such cases, data publication can be dispensed with. Instead, all necessary information required for data reproduction (e.g. procedure/method, measuring devices and software used, (setting) parameters) can be published.
A detailed description of the research data is immensely important to enable other researchers to understand or re-use the research data! A good indication of what information is important is the following question: What information do I need to be able to interpret a third-party data set and continue working with this research data? Other important metadata includes information on the people who collected the research data (e.g. ORCID), on the associated publications (DOI, bibliographic information), keywords and licensing of the research data.
We recommend choosing open licences where possible, such as the Creative Commons licencCC0 or CC-BY (Attribution). For software, we recommend special software licences, such as MIT, MPL-2.0, Apache 2.0 or GPL-3.0-only
The following tools can help you with your selection: For software licences choosealicense and for Creative Commons licences CC-Chooser.
Or contact the colleagues in the Publication Advisory Service directly at publikationsberatungtibeu.
Specialised programs are often used to collect and analyse research data, depending on the discipline and measurement method. These programmes often use their own file formats. Of course, this also applies to word processing programmes.
However, not all file formats can be archived in the medium or long term. Proprietary formats in particular, whose usability and readability is dependent on specific software manufacturers or platforms, are not suitable for archiving and should therefore be converted into open, long-term readable formats.
An overview from ETH Zurich shows which file formats are particularly suitable for archiving texts, audio and video recordings, vector graphs, tables or images, for example. It also provides useful tips for carrying out the conversion.
If you publish your research data prepared in this way together with your dissertation in the LUH text repository, the TIB will take care of the long-term preservation!
