Open research
Researchers across all fields—science, medicine, humanities, and the creative arts—generate valuable data and digital materials. Open research supports sharing of research materials across all fields. By sharing and publishing your data, code, software, creative outputs, and other research materials openly, you enable others to build on your work—helping to solve problems both within your field and across disciplines.
On the Open Scholarship webpage, discover the benefits of open research and how you can apply it to your work in a way that supports both your research and global communities.
Data publication
Publishing your data can be done in two ways: by creating a standalone metadata record to inform others of its availability, or by sharing the data alongside detailed metadata and a license to offer additional context and clarity.
Before making your data available for access, it’s important for you to consider any data privacy, ownership or agreements that may limit access to your data and other digital materials.
Classifying your data
Assessing your data with the University's Research Data Classification Framework will help you determine if your data is sensitive and how sensitive your data may be. Using this framework before publishing your data will help guide you in avoiding potential mismanagement.
Access the Research Data Classification Framework
Other key considerations before making your data available include Intellectual Property rights (IPR), novel findings, consent to share, and whether your data contains Indigenous Knowledge.
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IP is the creation of new ideas and knowledge that has value for publication, commercialisation or community translation. Your IP can include the subject matter, methods and tools you create as part of your research.
All data and results with potential IP from a project should be kept confidential from public disclosure (e.g., posters, conference abstracts, public lectures, etc.) until the Intellectual property rights (IPR) have been legally registered.
Find out more:
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Novel findings in research refer to the discovery of a new idea or perspective that contributes to and expands the existing knowledge within a field of research.
Temporarily limiting access to your data by placing it under embargo in a repository lets you publish your findings before making the data publicly available.
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Indigenous and cultural data should only be shared with the consent of Indigenous peoples and their communities. The CARE principles provide researchers with a data governance framework for sharing Indigenous data, ensuring that its reuse is ethical, respects Indigenous cultures and empowers Indigenous communities.
Visit the Plan to Share webpage to learn more about overcoming barriers to making data open and about data compliance, research integrity and data confidentiality requirements.
Assessing your data using The Open Research Plan to Share Tool will offer guidance on how your project data should be shared and accessed.
Access the Open Research Plan to Share Tool & website
Where to publish your data
The most effective way to make your data and research materials available is by publishing them in a research repository.
The University has a research repository where you can publish and manage your data, non-traditional research outputs (NTROs) and other digital materials. outputs uploaded to this repository are stored on locally managed university servers.
Find out more about Melbourne Figshare
You may also choose to use a discipline specific repository or a generalist repository.
To gain a better understanding of what type of repository is best for your research materials, visit the Making data open page on the Open Scholarship website. Here you can explore an expanded guide covering different types of research repositories.