- Course overview
- Search within this course
- What is publicly available data?
- Finding publicly available data
- Using public data in your research
- Data sharing and submission
- Collection challenge
- Collection complete!
- Your feedback
- Get help and support
- References
All materials are free cultural works licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, except where further licensing details are provided.
Open data
To allow others to use our data and findings from experiments without restrictions we can make our data ‘open’. Open data describes data that can be accessed and used by anyone.
In this short clip (1:49), Tony Burdett, Technical Team Leader, Archival Infrastructure and Technology, describes what ‘open’ is.
In the video, Tony also outlined the FAIR principles which can help guide us in thinking about good data management:
Findable – ensure data can be found, for example by using unique identifiers and clear metadata.
Accessible – ensure data can be retrieved using the unique identifier, however this may require user authorisation where necessary.
Interoperable – ensure use of shared formats, vocabularies and ontologies.
Reusable – ensure data are clearly described, meet community standards and have a usage license.
Can you think of any other reasons to make your data open? If you’re interested in more discussion on this topic, watch the recorded webinar Open access: Let’s talk about open access, open data and open software.
Continue on to the next page for examples of data resources that are not ‘open’.