Publishing Scientific Results

    Assuming you have only the software in a (private) git repo, you might want to also add and share with others the data and results related to that software:

    • If not, make the repo public.
    • arXiv (physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics)
    • (biology)
    • PeerJ Preprints (biological and medical sciences)
    • (psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, and other fields related to cognition)
    • figshare (all disciplines)
    • (all disciplines)
    • Social Science Research Network (cognitive sciences, economics, humanities, law and more)

    We recommend that you start as early as possible to think how are you managing your data during and after your project. Some questions you should ask yourself are:

    • What data am I using in my project ? Think about measurements coming from experiments (performed by you or by third parties), but also interviews, statistical information, etc.
    • Where is my data coming from ? How is it being collected ?
    • Does my data comply with the required standards applicable ? For example think of the FAIR principles, GDPR, or other ethical restrictions.

    Checksum and sign your data archive:

    • Do a checksum on your files to check preservation of integrity. This means you will need to store the checksum somewhere, usually they are tiny, so they can be provided along with the data. In fact, some Linux distributions provide the checksum of the iso image so you can check your image when you download it. Storing checksums within the filename is not common practice anymore. A lot of data formats allow storing the checksum in the file; ie. the metadata part contains the checksum of the data part.

    File permissions and location:

    • If you need to work with your data, but do not plan to change it then set file access permissions to read only.
    • Try to avoid processing files that are also being synced with a cloud platform (like dropbox or onedrive).
    • Try to make a back-up if possible and store this back-up at a different physical location.

    Specific remarks on person identifiable information:

    • Do not do anything without consulting your privacy consultant.

    For long term storage we advise researchers based in The Netherlands to explore the services of SURFsara website, the Collaborative organization for ICT in Dutch education and research, including but not exclusively:

    • for secure data sharing up to 250 GB.
    • Data archive for long term storage of extremely large datasets.