Publication of research data on the edoc-Server
In addition to traditional forms of publication, digital research data can also be published on the edoc-Server. On the website of the research data management initiative you will find information on the topic research data. There you will also be supported in your search for a suitable subject repository. As an institutional open access repository of the Humboldt University in Berlin, the edoc-Server is also available for publication of your research data.
Guidelines and requirements for research data publications on the edoc-Server:
- The files to be published should be the finalized version of the research data set. It is not possible to make changes or updates to the publication after it has been published. If changes are required, the modified files will be made available as a new publication.
- Choose open, standardized and non-proprietary data formats that are suitable for long-term archiving. You can find an overview of recommended formats in our FAQs.
- If you would like to publish files that exceed 500 MB in total, please contact us before submitting.
- Research data should be organized and saved using a clear directory structure and file naming. If you have a large number of files, it is recommended to group them into uncompressed zip files. Recommendations for naming files can be found in our FAQs.
- Choose an informative and descriptive title so that the published research data can be recognized as an independent publication. In the case of data relating to a specific time period, this should be stated in the title in order to provide a clear temporal reference, e.g. "Interview data on attitudes towards the handling of research data among doctoral researchers at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2014." Avoid generic titles such as "Research data for dissertation XY", you can add this information as a subtitle.
- For the comprehension and re-use of the research data, it is necessary to document the context of its origin and the tools used for data collection, processing and analysis. Please provide a documentation in the form of a readme file. We recommend to provide the file in German and English. For further information on the readme file and the recommended content, please refer to our FAQs.
- A persistent identifier (DOI - Digital Object Identifier) is assigned to a each research data publication. With this identifier the publication can easily be referenced or related to other publications. If the research data publication is a supplement to a text publication (e.g. dissertation or journal article) we recommend to prepare the publication of the research data first. In the submission process, the DOI of the research data publication will be shown. You can add this DOI as a reference in the PDF document of the text publication.
- If you want to publish interviews or sensitive data, obtain the consent of the involved persons. Ensure that the interviews or data are sufficiently anonymised. The interviewees should also be informed that the research data publication will be freely available and published permanently (removing the publication afterwards is not possible!). In the case of interviews, the interviewees themselves should check the anonymised/abbreviated interviews again before publication to see whether the degree of anonymisation is sufficient for them.
- Examples of research data publications on the edoc-Server can be found here.
Submission process
Start the submission by logging in or registering on the edoc server as described under "Submitting a publication". Select a suitable collection in the "Research data" section.