Data Sharing

Data sharing means making your research data available to others. There are many ways to share data, each with their own benefits and considerations. Some examples include sharing data over email, through secure transfer services (like UTSend), through a project website, or by making your data available through a data repository. 

There are many reasons you may choose to share data, including:

  • Maintaining research data integrity and transparency
  • Supporting open science
  • Promoting new discoveries by allowing others to build off your research
  • Increasing your research impact

It’s important to consider whether you want to share your data at the beginning of a project and document this in your DMP, any partnership or collaboration agreements, and, if applicable, in your Research Ethics Board (REB) protocol. Before you share your data, consider:

  • Do you have the right to share the data? Is it your intellectual property? Are there any agreements with research partners that prohibit or outline specific requirements about sharing data? If you’ve used data created by someone else, have you reviewed the relevant licenses to ensure you are able to share the data? If working with human data, was sharing included in your REB protocol and consent documentation?
  • Should you share the data? There may be moral and ethical reasons not to share your data (e.g., if your research involves endangered species, sacred sites, dangerous chemicals, etc.). Could sharing the data cause any potential harm to individuals or communities? Are you ready to share the data Would you prefer to wait until an associated publication is released? Are there other projects you want to pursue with the data before sharing it?
  • Has the data been prepared for sharing? What actions do you need to complete so that your data is ready to be shared? Would others be able to understand and reuse the data based on the information provided? Go to Preparing for Deposit for more information.

Resources

Library services
The library provides support for:

  • Navigating decisions about data sharing
  • U of T Dataverse in Borealis, the institutional data repository

External resources