Open your data
ESNBU is Open Access and some articles feature research data which we would like to see open to the readers.
ESNBU encourages authors to provide their research data as Open Data for their published articles.
Data that is integral to the paper must be made available in such a way as to enable readers to replicate, verify and build upon the conclusions published in the paper. Any restriction on the availability of this data must be disclosed at the time of submission. We recommend that data for which public repositories are widely used, and are accessible to all, should be deposited in such a repository prior to publication. The appropriate linking details and identifier(s) should then be included in the publication and, where possible, in the repository, to facilitate linking between the journal article and the data. If such a repository does not exist, data should be included as supporting information to the published paper or authors should agree to make their data available upon reasonable request.
License: Author selected but we recommend the following:
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY-4.0)
- Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-BY)
- If Public Domain Dedication and License are required, the respective license will be applied.
(For other compatible and incompatible licenses, see http://opendefinition.org/licenses ☍)
Let’s look at what is open data, how to open data, and why do so.
What is Open Data
In short
“Open data is data that anyone is free to use, reuse and redistribute without restriction (except, perhaps the requirements to attribute and sharealike). For precise details see http://opendefinition.org ☍.”
How Can I Make My Data Open?
1. Make your data publicly available!
If your data isn’t publicly available then you make it hard for others to use it (or even decide whether to use it).
2. Apply a suitable open data license.
Explicit licensing is essential to provide clarity and certainty to users and reusers (and is needed even if you want your data to be ‘public domain’).
What types of data?
Repositories cover almost any file type:
- Datasets - tables, statistics (SPSS formats .por, .sav; .txt, .csv; etc.)
- Figures - images, illustrations, diagrams (tiff, png, jpg, svg)
- Media - video, audio
- Code - computer code, scripts (html, xml, css, xslt, js, etc.), binaries
- Plus CAD, GIS, 3D, etc.
Benefits of opening your data
Besides providing clarity and certainty to users, there are some immediate benefits to you as a researcher.
You make your research data citable - unique DOIs and easy-to-use citation tools make it easy to refer to your research data. And researchers will cite the paper and/or the data – this increases your chances of citations with a single publication. And this is very important in the field we’re studying – the humanities.
Valid, Reliable and Verifiable research – By opening your data, others will be able to verify and replicate your research so you build trust in your work. And if they build upon your work – this is advancement of science.
Apart from being shareable and citable, your data is more easily discoverable, accessible, and reproducible. Opening data promotes standards, best practice, improves transparency, credibility, accountability.
Where to deposit your data
- Our first recommendation is Zenodo, https://zenodo.org ☍. It's funded and powered by CERN, supported by OpenAIRE and the EU's Horizon2020 programme
- Figshare - https://figshare.com ☍
- Mendeley data, an Elsevier service - https://data.mendeley.com ☍
Both are free, you can get a DOI for the data, a range of file types support, lots of storage space.
Mendeley seems better because it is basically "Scopus academic social network" - researcher profile, integrated citations alerts from Scopus, plus an online and desktop reference manager and publications upload.
Open Data example
Our first Open Data are linked to the article Education in Localization: How language service providers benefit from educational partnerships by Carreen Schroeder from Nimdzi Insights LLC published in Vol4, issue 2, 2018. The three data sets are licensed under CC-BY 4.0. on Mendeley data like this:
Johnson, T. (2018a). TLM Graduates by year (v1) ['Data set']. Mendeley Data, https://doi.org/10.17632/43tkv8b8gx.1 ☍
Johnson, T. (2018b). Universities beginning to advance their translation and interpretation courses (v1) ['Data set']. Mendeley Data. https://doi.org/10.17632/hv4rmd5mfh.1 ☍
Johnson, T. (2018c). Universities without established partnerships with language services but may be open to collaboration (v1) ['Data set']. Mendeley Data. https://doi.org/10.17632/v9n39vv3gd.1 ☍
Stan Bogdanov
Managing Editor