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Publish Research Data

Research data should be published together with the research results, where appropriate and possible. The aim is to enable other people to use, review and reuse scientific findings.

Verknüpfte Strukturen im Gehirn mit Knotenpunkten (Künstliche Intelligenz)
Source: pixabay.com. Free for use under the Pixabay Content License

On this page you will find out:

Why should research data be published?

The appropriate publication of research data offers TUHH researchers many advantages:

  • Research results from publications become more transparent and verifiable in conjunction with the data used.
  • Data can be reused. This means that duplication of work can be avoided and new impetus for research ideas can be generated instead.
  • Research data can be cited. Scientists working with data receive greater academic credit.
  • Public access to research results is in line with good scientific practice (see Guideline 13 of the DFG Code of Conduct).
  • The publication of data is increasingly desired for project funding (see TUB website Guidelines and Basics).

What do the FAIR principles mean?

According to the FAIR Data Principles, research data should be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable1. This means that they meet certain quality requirements for easy reuse.

Illustration der FAIR Data Principles
Source: fosteropenscience.eu

At its core, research data should:

  • provided with a globally unique persistent identifier (PID),
  • adequately described with standard-compliant metadata,
  • archived in a recognized repository in suitable formats and
  • made as openly accessible as possible under a free license.

A note on this: FAIR does not mean that all data must be publicly available! Rather, the FAIR principles aim to open up datasets for new usage scenarios as far as legally and technically possible.

In principle, the FAIR principles also apply to research software. The FAIR Principles for Research Software (FAIR4S) were developed specifically to promote the shared use and reuse of software2.

How FAIR are your data? This EUDAT checklist provides answers3.

Where can I publish research data?

Where possible, research data should be published and archived in a trustworthy repository in order to make it accessible to interested parties. Repositories also serve as a good support to fulfill the guidelines of the FAIR principles.

If available, subject-specific repositories should be given preference. If no suitable subject repository is available, you can publish the data in the research data collection of TUHH Open Research (TORE). For (citable) software, we recommend GitHub combined with Zenodo. We will be happy to assist you in selecting a suitable repository.

1. Subject-specific repositories

Research data should ideally be published permanently in a subject-specific research data repository. The requirements for findability and accessibility can vary greatly depending on the subject and community.

re3data.org, the Registry of Research Data, offers support in selecting a suitable repository.

re3data.org Regsitry of Research Data Repositories

Trusted repositories should be able to provide answers to the following minimum criteria:

Assignment of permanent and unique identifiers (PIDs)
  • Enables data to be found and identified
  • Enables searching, citing and retrieving data
  • Support for versioning data
Metadata

  • Finding data is made possible
  • Links to related relevant information, such as other data and publications
  • Publicly accessible information also for unpublished, protected, withdrawn or deleted data
  • Use of metadata standards that are generally recognized (by the scientific community)
  • Metadata must be machine searchable

Data access and usage licenses
  • Enable access to data under defined conditions
  • Ensures the authenticity and integrity of data
  • Enable the retrieval of data
  • Provide information on licenses and authorizations (ideally in machine-readable form)
  • Ensure confidentiality and respect for the rights of data subjects and data originators

Data preservation
  • Ensuring the persistence of metadata and data
  • Transparency in terms of mission, scope, preservation policies and plans (including governance, financial sustainability, retention period and continuity plan)

The Practical Guide to the International Alignment of Research Data Management from Science Europe (p. 26 ff) also provides guidance on selecting a suitable repository4.

2. Hamburg University of Technology: TORE

At the TUHH, the TUHH Open Research collection of research data is available for the publication of TUHH research data.

Logo TUHH Open Research

TUHH Open Research (TORE) is operated as an institutional repository for research data at the TU Hamburg in accordance with the FAIR Data principles. Long-term archiving takes place on S3 storage at the regional data center of the University of Hamburg. TORE supports DataCite as a metadata schema. DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) for a data set, ORCID iDs for persons and ROR IDs for institutions are used as persistent identifiers.

TORE is listed in the Registry of Research Data Repositories:

re3data.org: TUHH Open Research – Research Data TUHH; editing status 2022-06-09; re3data.org – Registry of Research Data Repositories. https://doi.org/10.17616/R31NJML0 last accessed: 2024-03-05.

3. Software via GitHub üder Zenodo

Software development is often an important part of scientific work at the TUHH. Many of you use GitLab or GitHub to collaboratively create and share scientific software. But what is the best way to cite the software?

Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) have become the quasi-standard for referencing digital publications. So what could be more obvious than using DOIs for software too? This is possible thanks to the collaboration between GitHub and Zenodo from CERN.

An example from the Institute of Communication Networks at the TUHH:

Sebastian Lindner, Konrad Fuger, Musab Ahmed Eltayeb Ahmed, & Andreas Timm-Giel. (2023). ComNetsHH/ldacs_simulator: LDACS MCSOTDMA Simulator (v1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8085497

How to connect GitHub to Zenodo:

Logos GitHub und Zenodo
  1. Navigate to the login page for Zenodo.
  2. Click Log in with GitHub.
  3. Review the access permissions information and then click Authorize Zenodo.
  4. Navigate to the Zenodo GitHub page.
  5. To the right of the name of the repository you want to archive, toggle the button to On.

Zenodo archives your repository and issues a new DOI each time you create a new GitHub release. Follow the steps under “Managing publications in a repository” to create a new publication.

And two more tips:

  1. Use the TUHH community on Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/communities/tuhh/
    Assignment is also possible at a later date.
  2. Place a CITATION.cff in your repository.
    CITATION.cff files are simple text files with human- and machine-readable citation information for software (and data sets). Code developers can include them in their repositories to tell others how to cite their software correctly.

Here you can find a detailed blog post about the publication on Zenodo via Github: Make your code citable. The practical report from the Institute of Control Systems is also worth reading: Open Access Publishing at the TUHH: Exemplary step-by-step instructions for a toolchain with TORE, GitLab, Sherpa Romeo and Zenodo5.

How can I make research data citable?

If research data are to complement research results, then they must also be reliably citable. TUHH Open Research and many other repositories therefore register their content via a registration agency at DataCite. A unique DOI is assigned to each data set, which can be used to permanently cite and access the data set.

An example from the Institute for Transport Planning and Logistics W-8:

Aberle, Christoph (2019). Mobility as a Service: ein Angebot auch für Einkommensarme? (Geo-Datensatz). TUHH Universitätsbibliothek. https://doi.org/10.15480/336.2396.2

You can also transfer data records from TUHH Open Research or DataCite to your ORCID profile and thus uniquely assign them to you as a person.

Citations

  1. Wilkinson, M., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, I. et al. The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Sci Data 3, 160018 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18 ↩︎
  2. Chue Hong, N. P., Katz, D. S., Barker, M., Lamprecht, A.-L., Martinez, C., Psomopoulos, F. E., Harrow, J., Castro, L. J., Gruenpeter, M., Martinez, P. A., Honeyman, T., Struck, A., Lee, A., Loewe, A., van Werkhoven, B., Jones, C., Garijo, D., Plomp, E., Genova, F., … RDA FAIR4RS WG. (2022). FAIR Principles for Research Software (FAIR4RS Principles) (1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.15497/RDA00068 ↩︎
  3. Jones, S., & Grootveld, M. (2017). How FAIR are your data?. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5111307 ↩︎
  4. Science Europe (January 2021). Practical Alignment of Research Data Management (Extended Edition). https://www.scienceeurope.org/media/4brkxxe5/se_rdm_practical_guide_extended_final.pdf ↩︎
  5. Patrick Göttsch, Christian Hespe, Adwait Datar, Simon Heinke und Lennart Heeren (20. Mai 2022). Open Access Publishing at TUHH: Exemplary Step-by-step guide for a toolchain with TORE, GitLab, Sherpa Romeo and Zenodo. https://www.tub.tuhh.de/tubtorials/2022/05/30/open-access-publishing-at-tuhh-exemplary-step-by-step-guide-for-a-toolchain-with-tore-gitlab-sherpa-romeo-and-zenodo/ ↩︎

Do you need support? I will gladly advice you.

Francesca Schulze


Francesca Schulze
E-Mail: forschungsdaten@tuhh.de
Tel.: +49 40 42878 3311


Detailed information on research data can be found on the information platform forschungsdaten.info.

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