Research Data York

Some funders will require data deposit in specific data repositories. For example, ESRC grant holders should offer their data to the UK Data Service, while NERC grant holders should offer their data to the most appropriate NERC data centre. Check your funder’s data policy.

Otherwise, it is up to you to choose the most appropriate repository for your data - typically a recognised data repository for your discipline if one exists. re3data.org can help you find 'trustworthy' data repositories that meet a minimum standard.

Postgraduate researchers are encouraged to share research data from their PhD research, on the condition that:

• the research process is not damaged by premature and/or inappropriate release of research data
• the research data has been generated in accordance with the University’s research policies and codes of practice, and in accordance with the policies of research funders

If you are in receipt of external funding, your funder may require you to make your research data available once the project has ended - as long as there are no ethical or legal reasons that prohibit data sharing. Check your funder’s data policy.

In general, it is advised that supervisors are always consulted before any research data underpinning PhD research is shared. 

Postgraduate researchers can deposit and share datasets via Research Data York. Postgraduate researchers do not have PURE accounts, so you will need to ask your supervisor (or a York co-author) to add a dataset record and upload your dataset(s) to PURE on your behalf. 

If you intend to deposit with Research Data York, you and your supervisor must check the terms of service to ensure you can meet your responsibilities, i.e. that you won’t share data that should not be shared, and that you understand how the data will be handled and curated.

If you are - collecting data from research participants; using material still under copyright; extracting data from commercial databases; obtaining data under licence; collecting data from archives for personal research purposes only; using commercially sensitive data; using confidential data (e.g. NHS data) - you may not be able to deposit and share the data. Contact the Open Research team for further assistance.

Research Data York is intended for research data underpinning published research or which is otherwise of value.

Research Data York is not intended for:

• research data still in active use by research projects (live data)
• research data created exclusively outside of the University of York
• research data that is confidential or sensitive (unless sufficiently anonymised)
• closed research data, i.e. data that it’s not possible to share
• research data that is already deposited elsewhere, e.g. in another data repository or archive
• everything you have.

By default, research data deposited with Research Data York is made openly available to anyone under a CC BY licence. A CC BY licence allows datasets to be reused for any purpose under the condition that users cite the data they have reused, maximising the impact of shared research data and the potential number of citations.

The public facing portal (The York Research Database) allows these datasets to be searched and downloaded.

• Example dataset: Dataset for "Strong anthropogenic control of Isoprene SOA"

You can apply an embargo period to the research data you deposit with Research Data York. Follow the guidance in the PURE User Guide on research data that requires an embargo.

If you are in receipt of external funding, you should check your funder’s data policy. Funders may have different rules on when datasets have to be made available. If you are unsure, you should contact your funder directly.

If you plan to deposit data with Research Data York and you have identified reasons to restrict access, you must discuss these with the Open Research team early in the research process, and at least 60 working days before any deadline. Research Data York cannot accommodate all access restrictions.

• Read more about restricting access to data

When a request for access is received by Research Data York, it is sent on to the named contact (typically the data creator/supervisor) for a decision on access. Responsibility is transferred to the Head of Department when a named contact has left the University. The individual will consider:

• Factors to take into account when making a decision on access (Google Doc)

Native Google files (e.g. Google Docs and Google Sheets) will need to be downloaded into different file formats before deposit with Research Data York. You should ensure that the file format chosen adequately and accurately captures the content of the item, e.g. that calculated values in spreadsheets are retained or comments within documents captured.

You may be able to deposit and share the research data you have obtained from people with Research Data York, on the condition that the data is sufficiently anonymised and you can meet the specific requirements listed for depositing and sharing of sufficiently anonymised personal data.

You must also discuss your plans with the Open Research team early in the research process and long before you come to deposit such data with Research Data York.

Please note: The specific requirements cannot be met by postgraduate researchers (PGRs). As such, Research Data York is not an option for postgraduate researchers with (once) sensitive data.

Anonymising data to protect the identities of individuals is one of the strategies that can be used to enable the safe sharing of data. Anonymising research data can be time-consuming and costly so early planning is essential.

You can upload your data files (unless files are sensitive/personal) in PURE. Multiple files can be packaged (e.g. into a .zip, .tar, .rar file) before upload. The upload limit in PURE is 20GB per file. We recommend using Google Chrome when uploading files as other browsers have upload restrictions.

If you need to upload files which are larger than 20GB and cannot obey the file limit without splitting your data into a large number of files you should email the Open Research team and we will help you to transfer the data outside of PURE.

Research Data York may not be able to accommodate very large datasets. If you plan to deposit data with Research Data York and your dataset is very large you must discuss this with the Open Research team early in the research process, and at least 60 working days before any deadline.

Library staff will review the dataset record you have created in PURE and if the metadata complies with minimum metadata requirements, a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) will be sent to you and the record validated. You will be able to add the DOI to your publication data access statements.

• Read more about data access statements

If your research data will support published research findings you should add a data access statement to your publication to link the publication to your data. This is good scholarly practice and is also a requirement of many funders. You may wish to use something along the lines of:

The data supporting this research is openly available from the University of York data repository at [insert DOI]

The following convention can be used if you or someone else refers to your data elsewhere:

Authors [creators of the data]. Publication Year. Dataset Title [format and/or medium]. Publisher/Repository. DOI/Link to data.

• Read more about data access statements and data citation

If you have deposited your dataset(s) in an external data repository, all the University requires is a dataset record in PURE (the University's Research Information System).

Email the Open Research team with the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for the dataset and the DOI for the related paper, and library staff will create a dataset record in PURE for you, based on the one in the external repository. Your PURE record and your researcher profile will then automatically update. Please note this is a pilot service.