Data Management Toolkit @ UNH

Depositing your data in an archive or repository will facilitate its discovery and preservation, and facilitate proper citation. Informal methods of providing your data, such as emailing it to a colleague or posting a file on a website, are not the same as sharing your data in a way that makes it discoverable and easy for other researchers to find your data.

Repositories are maintained by many academic discipline communities, by funding agencies to provide access to funded research, and by academic institutions to protect community member research. Many repositories assign data identifies to your data (e.g., DOI, PURL, Handle.Net, etc.).

Some journals such as Nature, Science, and PLoS ONE require authors to make all supporting data available to readers.  Check journal policies and author guidelines prior to submitting your article to any journal for publication.  

Before sharing human subjects or culturally/nationally sensitive data, always consider the rights and responsibilities you have with regard to issues of confidentiality, privacy, and intellectual property. For more on the responsible conduct of research, see the Responsible Conduct of Research & Scholarly Activity research guide. 

Confidentiality

It is vital to maintain the confidentiality of research subjects for reasons of ethics and to ensure the continuing participation in research. At the same time, data on research subjects can be shared if proper steps are taken to maintain participant confidentiality:

• Informed consent should make a provision for data sharing: When obtaining informed consent from study participants, ensure confidentiality while also enabling the option of data sharing. Even if you are not certain that you will share your research data with others, you must obtain informed consent at the outset. For an example of how to write informed consent forms to allow for data sharing, see the U.K. Data Archive guide to consent.
• Evaluate the sensitivity of your data: Researchers should consider whether or not their data contains either direct or indirect identifiers that could be used, when combined with other public information, to identify research participants. If so, steps should be taken to remove or mask these identifiers in public-use data files.
• Obtain a confidentiality review: A benefit of depositing your data with some archives, such as ICPSR, is that their staff will review your data for the presence of confidential information.
• Comply with regulations for health research: HIPPA Privacy Rule, Information for Researchers.
• Enable restricted use of your data: Do you want to make your data available in a more restricted, limited-access manner?  For more information about restricted use data, check out the ICPSR DSDR program and the Preparing Data for Sharing section of the ICPSR Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving.
• Learn about guidelines from the National Academy of Engineering: Their Online Ethics Center includes a discussion of  Responsible Collection, Retention, Sharing, and Interpretation of Data.

Intellectual Property