Checklist Data Publishing

Fill in all relevant metadata fields

Describe your research data as elaborately as possible in the metadata fields of the repository.

Name files well

You improve the accessibility and sustainability of research data if you name your files wisely before publishing and preservation. It is good if you decide on a consistent structure for how you name your files. Filenames should be informative and descriptive as to be findable and understandable in a cross-disciplinary setting. Filenames ought to include a date stamp. Filenames must not contain any forbidden characters or white space. The only permitted character set is A-Za-z0-9_-. Preferably use dot (.) only once, for separation of the file extension. These recommendations improve machine readability and findability. DataCarpentry, DataOne, Dryad, and Stanford provide guides for good file naming practices.

Recommendations for folder structure and file naming

Swedish National Data Service (SND)

Use accessible file formats

You improve the accessibility and sustainability of your research data if you save them in common, open file formats before publishing and preservation. This makes the research data accessible to more users and for longer. The Swedish National Data Service offers more information about the file formats best suited for long-term preservation and accessibility. When proprietary formats offer important functionality and layout options (e.g. an Excel workbook with several sheets, embedded diagrams, images, etc.), you should of course publish and preserve the research data in that format, however, it might be helpful to also add a version of the research data in an open, non-proprietary file format. It is important to describe the file formats used as accurately as possible, including references to the software (if possible with the version used) by whom they were produced and any software required to open the files. This is particularly important when the item contains .zip or .tar folders containing multiple file formats.

Choosing file formats, Swedish National Data Service (SND)

Name and describe variables well

Are your variables (column headings) understandable and possible to interpret correctly – even by yourself in 5-10 years time? Or by someone from another discipline? Is the unit of measurement noted clearly for every variable? Is there a need for any additional documentation as a README text-file (.txt), or a separate codebook to provide these details?

Standards and authorities

If there are standards or authorities (vocabularies, ontologies or other) that help describe and interpret your research data, link to these in both metadata and the actual data files. Authorities improve machine-readability and help make your research data more FAIR. Learn more about standards that enrich cultural heritage research from the Swedish National Heritage Board.

Webinar series 'Enriching Metadata - Enriching Research', the Swedish National Heritage Board

Links to references

Ensure that all provided links work. Use persistent links such as Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) whenever possible instead of easily broken URLs.

Associated publications

Provide a full reference, including DOI(s), to the publication(s) that are based on the research data you are about to publish. If the DOI is unknown, e.g. because the article is not yet accepted for publication, a preliminary entry can be made and amended later. Metadata can always be amended, even after a dataset has been published. Changes made to data files and filenames, however, generates a new version of the post (and a new DOI).

ORCID

Please connect your ORCID to your account in the data repository. If you do not have an ORCID, you can obtain one and associate it with your university account. You should only have one ORCID and ensure it is updated with relevant information.

Register an ORCID

Affiliation

State your affiliation correctly in the metadata. If the information has to be typed, please copy-paste the name of your department/institution from these lists: English/Swedish.