Publishing and access
Making research data findable, accessible, and reusable
Publishing and access decisions determine where research data are made available and how others can discover and use them. These choices affect long-term preservation, compliance with funder requirements, data visibility and reuse potential.
Where possible, data producers are encouraged to use responsible repositories that provide sustainable preservation, professional review and curation, persistent identifiers and appropriate access controls. Repository selection and access arrangements should be aligned with the sensitivity, scale and governance requirements of the data.
Selecting an appropriate repository is a key part of responsible data sharing. Domain-specific or national repositories often provide services tailored to research communities, including specialist metadata standards, disclosure control support and long-term preservation infrastructure.
When choosing a repository, data producers should consider:
- whether the repository supports the relevant data types
- long-term preservation commitments and certification status
- metadata and discovery services
- available access control options
- compliance with funder and institutional requirements.
Institutional repositories and other repositories may also be suitable for some data, particularly subsets of data supporting specific publications compared to completed curated data, and when domain repositories are unavailable. However, data producers should check whether these services provide long-term preservation, access management and curation support.
When data are published, repositories assign persistent identifiers such as Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). These identifiers provide stable references to data and support citation, discovery and long-term traceability.
Using persistent identifiers allows:
- data to be formally cited in publications
- reuse and impact to be tracked
- links between data and related research outputs to be maintained.
Data producers are also encouraged to include persistent personal identifiers, such as ORCID, when depositing data. Linking data to contributor identifiers helps ensure that creators and contributors receive appropriate credit, supports attribution across systems, and improves the discoverability of both data and associated research outputs.
Where possible, contributor identifiers should be included in repository metadata and associated publications to strengthen connections between people, data and research outputs.