Close
When submitting a record to the UCL Research Data Repository, there are different areas to consider
Contents
Before you begin
Before you begin preparing your submission to the UCL RDR, consider the following:
Browser choice
It is currently not recommended to use Firefox browser due to an issue with single sign on. Google Chrome or an alternative browser is recommended.
Who can use the repository
UCL staff and UCL students enrolled for PhD, Mphil or MRes degrees can use the UCL RDR. Students enrolled on undergraduate or taught postgraduate programmes cannot use the UCL RDR but may utilise the UCL Open Education Repository.
Legal Responsibilities
All authors are jointly responsible for ensuring that any data uploaded is compliant with:
Data containing personally identifiable information cannot be uploaded. Please contact the RDM team for advice on what constitutes personal data and guidance on alternative repositories that can handle this kind of material.
Authorship
The expectation is that all contributors to research data should be acknowledged, following a similar code of practice to authorship for an academic paper. Authorship of a dataset should normally mirror that of any related papers. Further information on UCL policy regarding authorship is available.
File sizes and formats
An upload to the repository can be one or multiple files of any format. For any files greater than 5 GB should be uploaded using the Figshare FTP uploader to do this. There is also Figshare guidance on using the API. It is not possible to upload a directory containing a folder structure directly but a set of folders can be combined into a single zip file and uploaded as a single file.
Organising data
There are several ways to organise items uploaded to the repository. Files can be uploaded individually with their own titles, descriptive text and DOI. Individual items can be grouped together in a collection if needed, where a single DOI can be used to link to all the items within that collection. Alternatively, a single upload can contain multiple files (e.g. all of the raw data used to generate the figures of a particular paper) with a single title, description and DOI being used for the entire dataset.
Metadata
Some fields are mandatory to complete when depositing data, but we encourage you to be as thorough as possible when adding descriptive metadata. This will help us to process your submission quickly as well as help to make your data more useful for other researchers.
In the 'Description' field, we recommend adding one to two paragraphs describing the item you are publishing, including information such as how the data was created and the tools and technologies utilised and adding a descriptive title for your data record. You can find more information about creating high quality metadata on our Sharing Data guide.
If a mistake is noticed after publication, title and author fields can only be altered by UCL RDR staff. This process will create a new version of the record with a new DOI. Please double check this information carefully. Other fields can be modified if desired, which allows links to any publications that make use of the data to be added.
Linking data sets to journal publications
It is good practice to provide a link from the UCL RDR to any publications related to the data, ideally with a DOI. There may not be a DOI issued for your paper until the final stage of the publication process, so you may not be able to add a link during the initial upload. If this is the case, you can add a link into the references or description field after your data are published in the repository as authors can always update these fields. You can also link to any pre-print versions of an article.
Please visit our extended FAQ page if you need further guidance, or Library Services Research Data Management team using lib-researchsupport@ucl.ac.uk if you have any questions.
Preparing your research outputs
What to deposit
The decision over what to keep and share should be informed by a number of considerations:
- UCL’s Research Data policy;
- legal and ethical requirements;
- and the potential usefulness of the data to others.
It might be tempting to keep and share all your data 'just in case'. You should try and make decisions on what to keep and share based on the likely potential value for others weighed against the time and costs of documenting, preparing and preserving this data for the long-term.
Data you should deposit in the UCL RDR
1. Data underpinning publications
At a minimum, you should share the underlying research outputs to the conclusions of your published research. This helps facilitate research reproducibility and verification. This includes publishing datasets which underpin charts, graphs and other visualisations in your papers. If you only used part of a dataset then it is acceptable to publish only the parts of the dataset which underpin your published findings. If this data is available somewhere else then you should cite the data in your paper. Advice on data citation is available.
2. Wider datasets which may be useful in the future
You should consider depositing your wider datasets (i.e. not just data underpinning publications). These are datasets which have been processed, cleaned and/or curated and may have value for you or others in the future.
This data may:
- Allow researchers to carry out other types of analysis from your data which could confirm your research conclusions and/or contribute to new research.
- Help explain a novel, high quality or other valuable method/approach to carrying out research in your discipline.
- Give access to data which would otherwise be very difficult, expensive, time consuming or impossible to reproduce.
Data you should NOT deposit in the UCL RDR
Please do not deposit the following categories:
- Data for which you (or UCL) do not hold the copyright or other intellectual property rights, and/or for which you have not obtained permission to share the data.
- Data containing personal information. You cannot upload personal data or special category personal data in this repository.
- There are data sharing agreements in place that restrict access to the data to particular individuals or groups (this may be the case where there are commercial agreements in place with industrial partners, for instance).
The UCL Research Data Repository is not intended for administrative data relating to human resources, finance and other operational matters. For support in managing this data see the UCL Records Office’s advice.
Review process once you have submitted your record
When users submit records for review, the Research Data Management team in UCL Library Services review the records checking the metadata meets expected standards. If there are no issues with the metadata, the record will be published and the uploader will receive an automated email notifying them the record has been published. If a reviewer wshes to provide feedback to the uploader prior to the record being published, the uploader will be contacted via email.
The Research Data Group in the Centre for Advanced Research Computing manages membership and handles any technical issues.