Publishing & Archiving Research Data

Overview

Why should you publish your research data?

How to publish research data on mediaTUM?

How can you publish your research data?

What should you consider when archiving data?

Where can you publish your research data?

Contact

Why should you publish your research data?

The publication of research data has several advantages:

Transparency and comprehensibility of your research will be improved.
Published data will remain visible and usable in the long term and can be cited specifically.
Papers published together with related research data are cited more often.

Further information on the "citation advantage" is available here:

Piwowar, Vision: Data reuse and the open data citation advantage
Drachen et al.: Sharing data increases citations
Colavizza et al.: The citation advantage of linking publications to research data

For these reasons, third-party funding bodies and journals are increasingly demanding the publication of data.

How can you publish your research data?

There are different options for publishing research data. Common forms are:

accompanying a paper or thesis,
in combination with a data paper,
or independently.

What is a data paper?
A data paper describes one or more available data sets. It contains information on methods of collection, quality and limitations of data, as well as possibilities for re-use. The data set itself is usually stored in a repository and the location is linked in the data paper.

How can I publish a data paper?
Many journals allow the publication of data paper following a peer-review process. Most journals publish data papers alongside other types of articles.

Where can you publish your research data?

Until now, data sets have often been published as an appendix to a paper. However, repositories are technically and organisationally better suited. The following options are available:

Subject-specific Repositories
In some disciplines there are established subject-specific repositories. Because they are well known, the data are easily found by the target group. A further advantage are content-related additional features such as subject-specific metadata standards and, in some cases, a quality check (checking the file format or plausibility of the data). If you are looking for subject-specific repositories, please refer to your discipline or use the Repository Finder.
Interdisciplinary Repositories
If no suitable subject-specific repository is available, you can publish in multidisciplinary repositories. Some funding organisations offer their own repositories. At TUM you can use mediaTUM. Here you can publish all kinds of research data.

The advantages are:
- Support by the Research Service Centre
- no restrictions on file formats
- free publication even of very large data sets
- option of anonymous access for peer reviewers
- on request assignment of DOIs (digital object identifier) with versioning option
- storage on trustworthy servers of the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in accordance with DFG recommendations on data archiving

How to publish research data on mediaTUM?

Data Publication Procedure

If you would like to publish research data on mediaTUM, please contact us at researchdata@ub.tum.de. In order to prepare the publication, we need certain information. You are welcome to send us the completed publication request form. If you have any questions in advance, please do not hesitate to contact us.

With the provided information we will create a metadata record on mediaTUM. This metadata record is not publicly visible for the time being. Only you can view the entry after you have logged into mediaTUM with your TUM ID.

Simultaneously with the metadata record we also create a directory for the upload of your data and provide you the link to the directory. Access is possible within the Munich Scientific Network (use a VPN connection if necessary) with your TUM ID. For long-term data backup we work with checksums. Please upload a checksum file together with your files according to the following instructions:

Manual for checksum generation
(for the English version, please scroll down in the document)

When you finished the upload, we review the checksum, take away write permissions to the data directory and provide you the complete data set for a final assessment. As soon as you issue release approval, the data set will be published.

Examples
Here are some examples how data publications on mediaTUM can look like:

https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/1544121
https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/1375836
https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/1510228
https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/1452571

Additional Options

Peer Review
If you wish, we can set up an anonymous login that allows reviewers to access the data set before publication.

DOI and Concept DOI
For most data publications we recommend to register a DOI (digital object identifier). DOIs are permanent identifiers with which data sets and other publications can be cited quickly and unambiguously. In order to ensure this citability, subsequent changes to the data set in question are not permitted. Please check your dataset carefully before you give us permission to register a DOI.

For some data sets it is foreseeable that changes will occur after publication. You may need to expand the data set or update the data regularly. For such cases we offer Concept DOIs. Each individual version of the dataset receives a DOI, while all versions together receive a common Concept DOI. The Concept DOI always resolves to the current version. If you cite the data set, you can now refer to a specific version or always to the latest one.

If you would like to have a Concept DOI for your dataset, please let us know as early as possible, in any case before registering the DOI for the first version.

What should you consider when archiving data?

Regardless of whether you want to publish your data or not, you should document your data and store them in file formats that can be used in the long term. The following questions will help you choose a sustainable and future-proof file format:

Is the file format widely used, even outside the own scientific community?
Is the format open source and can it be used without licensed software?
How complex is the format? In case of doubt, simple formats are preferable.
Does the format use data compression, which may be lossy?

Based on these criteria we recommend the following formats:

Content	Recommended Formats
Text	PDF (ideal: PDF/A) with no formatting: TXT for editability: ODT, RTF, HTML with formulae: LaTeX (TEX)
Tables	CSV / TSV numerical data: HDF5
Raster Graphics	PNG, TIFF (baseline)
Vector Graphics	SVG, EPS
Multimedia	Container: MKV, WebM, OGG Video-Codec: AV1, VP9 Audio-Codec: FLAC, WAV (PCM data), Vorbis, Opus
Relational Databases	SIARD, Dump, XML, see also table formats
Structured Data	XML, JSON, YAML

Contact

If you have any further questions or special requirements, we will be happy to help you:

Research Service Centre
e-mail: researchdata@ub.tum.de
Contact Persons