Preserve your research data FAIR-ly

The University’s new Research Data Management (RDM) Policy (2022) sets out a series of key expectations to aid you in meeting best practice in the management and preservation of research data.

One key expectation is that research data selected for preservation beyond the lifetime of a project are deposited in an appropriate research data repository in line with the FAIR Guiding Principles for research data. That is, your preserved research data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.

The FAIR Guiding Principles were developed to facilitate the discovery, citation, and reuse of preserved research data, although FAIR data is not necessarily open data: you can preserve your data FAIR-ly even if it is not suitable to be made publicly available.

In this blog post, we translate the FAIR Guiding Principles into a set of actions that, if followed, will ensure that your preserved research data is FAIR.

Findable

• Deposit your research data in a reputable research data repository that will assign your dataset a Persistent Identifier (PID), typically a DOI (Digital Object Identifier).
• Include this DOI in the metadata record for the preserved dataset.
• Use your author ORCiD to link the dataset to your publication record.
• Include a Data Access Statement in any associated research outputs, citing the dataset using the DOI, even if the research data are inaccessible to the public.

Accessible

• Publish the metadata record openly, even when the research data are not available, or no longer available.

Interoperable

• Convert your data to open (non-proprietary) file formats wherever possible, to facilitate interoperability (for example, from xls to csv).
• Structure your metadata, using formal disciplinary schema where appropriate, to ensure others can understand and reuse your data.

Reusable

• Ensure your metadata is richly descriptive, using formal disciplinary vocabularies where appropriate.
• Appropriately license your research data and/or metadata record for reuse.
• Include the licensing information in the open metadata record.
• Include detailed provenance for the research data in the metadata record.

Further information and guidance

For guidance on using research data repositories, contact the Research Data Management Officer at research-data@westminster.ac.uk