What to do with data after publishing your research

Many research projects within our faculty result in a publication. This may be, for example, an article in a scholarly journal, but also a PhD thesis. For every publication, it is important to be transparent about how the research was conducted. Therefore, researchers must provide a publication package for each published study. This is the policy in all social science faculties in the Netherlands.

This publication package contains all components that contributed to the research, such as the raw data, information about the researchers involved, and a description of the analyses performed. The intranet page on scientific integrity specifies exactly which components are required, and where and how to store the package.

You may choose where to store the publication package. This can be on the local O-drive, but also on platforms such as Yoda, DataverseNL, or OSF. It is important that the package cannot be removed or modified by the researcher after publication, and that it is preserved for at least ten years. In addition, the faculty requires a readme file to always be stored on the O-drive, indicating where the package can be found. If you store the package on a publicly accessible platform, you can also easily include a reference to it in your article.

Note that participant contact information and signed consent forms must never be included in the package. Research data must be anonymized wherever possible. If you are working with data that are difficult to fully anonymize or may remain traceable to individuals, you may restrict access to these data within the publication package and provide only the metadata.

For questions about publication packages and their storage, you can contact datamanagement-fsw@uu.nl.