Publish, Share, and Preserve Your Data
Research Data Services > Data Management > Publish, Share & Preserve Your Data
Shareable data are guided by the principles embodied in
FAIR
Findable: Data are identified through unique identifiers and clearly cited.
Accessible: Data are publicly available, for example, in a Open Access repository.
Interoperable: Data are in made actionable by being available in non-proprietary formats, for instance CSV rather than PDF or Excel files.
Reusable: Data are properly documented through readme files, file naming protocols, and codebooks.
See:
Preserving and citing data
Repositories can offer two types of preservation–bit-level and long-term preservation for re-use. Bit-level preservation means that the repository will provide access to the file as it was deposited. Long-term preservation for re-use usually includes additional curation, such as assessment of metadata quality when data are deposited and file format migrations so that the data can be accessed by current software and media. Even if the repository you use provides only bit-level curation, you can improve the re-usability of your data by including thorough documentation of methods and analysis along with your data and by using non-proprietary formats for your data files.
In addition, both your data, and you, the author, should have unique identifiers to ensure provenance and also to receive credit. See the section below on identifiers.
We recommend licensing your data under Creative Commons 0 license, to encourage data re-use, and requesting a citation when the dataset is re-used. We recommend using the DataCite format for data citations in publications:
Creator (PublicationYear). Title. Version. Publisher. ResourceType. Identifier
Example:
Baldwin, Bruce G. et al. (2017), A subset of Californian vascular plant species recognized by Baldwin et al. (2017), corresponding to to the “large and intermediate-sized genera” studied by Stebbins & Major (1965), v3, Dataset, https://dx.doi.org/10.6078/D1B885
Storage and collaboration tools
UC Davis offers several platforms to meet researchers’ needs to store and share data while working on them, under the banner of AggieCloud.
Learn more about UC Davis Cloud Services and the suite of services provided by Information and Education Technology, including those listed below.
Tool | Purpose |
Box for UC Davis | Cloud file storage and collaboration |
Google Drive for UC Davis | Cloud file storage and collaboration |
Office365 for UC Davis | Cloud file storage and collaboration |
Server hosting | Campus storage and hosting |
GitHub for UC Davis | Cloud code versioning platform |
REDCap | Secure web application for building and managing online databases for research, avaibale through CTSC |
Open Science Framework | Free open source project management system, integrated with Box, Google Drive and other platforms. Allows file storage |
Crashplan for UC Davis | Backup service |
Unique Identifiers
DOI or Digital Object Identifier is a link to a permanent URL. To share and preserve your data, you need to be able to refer to your files unambiguously. One option is to choose a repository that will provide your dataset with a DOI. A dataset with a doi can be discovered by following the link or through searching DataCite. We can assist you with minting or assigning DOIs for your project outputs. Contact us at dataserv@ucdavis.edu
ORCID : In addition to identifying your data, it is good practice to identify yourself with a distinct number provided by ORCID iD. This identifier allows you to distinguish yourself from researchers with the same or similar name. In addition, ORCID iDs are now required by a number of funders and publishers. One of the best benefits of of using your ORCID iD is that you can configure your ORCID profile to automatically update when you publish a paper or a dataset. Visit ORCID to apply. It’s free.