Ensure your data can be reused by having it accessible in a repository and making it available under an appropriate license.
Consider recommending how to cite your data. Data citation helps promote the reproducibility of research results and allows the impact of the data to be tracked.
Think about:
If you are a Charles Sturt student, you own the IP of all materials generated in the course of your studies and this includes research data (except if the research is a collaborative research activity and then the IP is owned by the University).
The University owns the IP created by staff within the conduct of their duties, including research data.
If you are working with collaborators outside of the University ensure you agree on all aspects of data handling at the start of the project.
If you are using research data already collected by others check the copyright and/or licensing agreements.
These Charles Sturt policies have further details: RDM Policy and Intellectual Property Policy.
For data that are Open Access, you may also wish to protect your copyright by using licensing conditions. One way to do this is with Creative Commons licences.
As a minimum, data needs to be appropriately attributed (cited) so it's a good idea to always add a licence so it is clear what your intentions are for sharing.
A Creative Commons (CC) licence is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work. A CC licence is used when an author wants to give people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that they have created without infringing copyright. Offering your work under a CC licence does not mean giving up your copyright but rather permits users to make use of your material in various ways, but only on certain conditions.
Data citation allows others to identify your data and acknowledge it, promotes the reproduction of your results, allows the impact and use of data to be tracked and provides a structure which recognises and rewards the data creator.
A data citation should have five elements:
Creator (Published Year). Title [Data set]. Publisher. Identifier (DOI/URL).
Further elements can be added such as version, resource type and accession number. Unpublished data can also be cited as a private communication. The APAStyle Blog has examples of Data Set References.
FORCE11 developed the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles.
A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier. Minting a DOI provides a permanent and persistent link to a digital object. If the digital object's URL location on the web changes, the DOI link is updated to the new resolving URL. A DOI ensures discovery, access and citation tracking and metrics.
Datasets with DOIs enable consistent and correct citation by others which ensures the impact of your research is measured.
Contact the Scholarly Communications team to find out how to mint a DOI to your dataset.
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