Metropolia is committed to promoting open RDI, including the opening of research data whenever it is possible. Opening the dataset refers to making the research dataset freely available for others to use. This typically involves depositing the dataset in an open data repository for example in IDA, AVAA, Aila, Zenodo, OpenAIRE etc.
Opening the dataset can be facilitated by utilizing Creative Commons licenses, through which the dataset owner grants usage rights to the dataset. The use of CC licences does not mean giving up your copyright, but makes it possible to offer others the right to use the data under certain conditions. The terms of use depend on the chosen licence. For open data, we recommend the CC BY 4.0 licence that also allows for the commercial use of data, but requires attributing the source.
Note that opening the dataset requires good data management practices from the very beginning. Opening the dataset should be considered in various aspects, including collaboration agreements, informing research participants, and anonymising any sensitive data.
Sensitive data, such as personal data or trade secrets, cannot be opened as such. However, there may be parts in these kinds of datasets that can be opened, or the data can be anonymised in a way that completely erases the identifiers it contains.
To request the opening of the data, you can make a data catalog notification. After the notification, data support services will provide instructions on packaging the data, anonymisation, data transfer, and ensuring that the data is suitable for open access. Once the data is opened, Metropolia ensures that the data remains usable and accessible.
In order to promote the re-use of research data, the data should comply with the FAIR principles.
Different fields of science have their own international data repositories, through which data can be shared to specialists in your field. Sharing data through a field-specific data repository increases the visibility of your data and RDI project and can help you find new cooperation partners. These data repositories are mainly suited for data with an international interest.
As a general international repository, we recommend Zenodo maintained by CERN. We can help you find a suitable international repository for your data as necessary.
​Digital preservation means keeping data usable for several decades or even centuries. As technology keeps on developing and file formats become outdated, the long-term digital preservation must be dynamic: for example, files are converted from one format to another to keep them usable in the future as well.
The CSC Digital Preservation Service for Research Data (PAS) is a service aimed e.g. at higher education institutions for the long-term storage of data. It requires an organisation-specific agreement and staff resources, meaning that its utilisation must always be agreed on separately. Digital Preservation Service for Research Data only applies to data of particular importance and value.
RDI projects can publish data articles describing their data. These articles can also be approved for publication data collection.
An example of a journal specialising in the description of scientific data is Data in Brief published by Elsevier.
If your project has produced research data that could also be of interest to other operators, and you are interested in publishing a data article in a Metropolia publication series, contact us at julkaisut@metropolia.fi. Metropolia offers a ready template for data article publishing.
Metropolia Library and Information Services | Accessibility Statement