Sharing data

Sharing research data increases the impact of your work, meets funder requirements, may lead to new collaborations, and reduces the costs of duplicating data collection. It also ensures transparency and accountability.

How you share your data will vary according to research environments and disciplines.

Upload to a data repository

Where possible, share your data through a well-established data repository or data service. Most services provide a digital object identifier (DOI) or another permanent identifier so data can be identified and cited unambiguously.

Publish in data journals

Data journals publish detailed descriptions of datasets; other journals may publish "data papers" alongside more traditional research papers. These methods allow data to be peer reviewed.

Typically, the data files associated with data papers are deposited in a data repository.

Publish as supplementary information

Supplementary information, or supplementary data, is often appended to a journal article as a Word document or PDF.

If you choose this option we recommend that you consider depositing such material in a data repository as well, and linking to it from the journal article using a permanent identifier.