Sharing research data

I’ve been working in science R&D for 10+ years, officially since undergrad. One thing (or one of a few things) that makes me happy, yet frustrates me at the same time: the joy of options. That is, there are (so) many routes that can lead us to our destination.

Today, I will discuss (aka rant; and in fact for this topic, it’s likely just a summary of my quick research for me to read later in the future when I need to repeat this task again) about sharing datasets.

I’ve seen multiple options out there. Perhaps the easiest/straightforward option would be to share data as supplementary materials along with the published article. This would be help the main article get more citations too (in fact, 9% more compared with article with no data [add citation here]).

Still, often time I also saw a couple of different repositories that my fellow researchers use. Now that I have to share my own work with the world, I realize there are WAY too many options (which indeed is good for the community, but I sometimes hate having choices)

So, below is my own summary of some resources available in the public domain…

(I will skip several editorials or publications that detailed why it is good to share data. Sadly, because most of them that I read only went over why, and did not discuss ‘where’ I can do so)
(Also, this is not about publishing a data paper. Rather, I focus on sharing data sets that accompany a research paper to be published separately)

List of data repositories (+ very informative discussion)

The list below is like a mother list, where each contains ‘reviews’ of a broad range of data repositories for different research areas

• Where should I deposit my data?
• Scientific data’s Data Repository Guidance - I learned a lot from this. Very detailed list. At the end of this article, there is a table comparing different generalist data repositories. Last updated in 2021.
• Elsevier’s Database linking
• DataCite’s re3data
• FAITsharing - this feels almost like a wiki page for data sharing

My top contenders

Given the goal of my quest today (i.e. find a repository to deposit my biomass dataset from a recent plant biology experiment), I came to the conclusion that ‘generalist repositories’ might be the best fit for my needs. I list these partly because I’m most familiar with them (i.e. I’ve seen them in other published papers that I remember their names more than other). Here are my finalists:

• Dryad - I’m biased because I saw a recently deposited dataset of a scientist whom I respect, so yeah; this is kinda verified in that regard.
• figshare
• zenodo
• open science - I have seen this one less as a repository, but did download a lot of useful resources when I learned about Mike Morrisson’s Better Scientific Poster
• DataCite - I am thinking of using this to add DOI for my github repository. Does it need one? Not sure.

Semi-finalist

I like the ideas of these, but still need more time to researsh

• Dataverse
• Mendeley Data - some comments on reddit point out the tie with the for-profit Elsevier [add citation], so I put on my soft fence temporarily.

That’s it for now. Once I deposited the data, I’ll perhaps review the experience again?

category: thoughts 
tag: science  resources  gradschool  publication  thoughtsinprogress 

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