Publish My Data

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This guide explains what Publish My Data self-service does, how it works, who it is for and where to get more information.

What is it for?

Researchers and research organisations are increasingly expected to make their data public. This allows verification of research claims and the building of innovation upon previous work. Similarly, public funders of research are increasingly requiring public access to the inputs and outputs of research. Research assessment frameworks are also moving towards ways of acknowledging the publication of data as a research output.

Publish My Data self-service is part of a suite of products and services provided by ANDS that allows data to play a similar role to a published journal article in the scholarly communications cycle.

What does it do?

Publish My Data allows Australian researchers and research organisations to publicise the existence of research collections via the internet.

The steps required to make data public are:

• Creation/collection of a dataset

• Storage

• Allocation of a persistent identifier

• Description

• Public registration

• Discovery

• Access

Publish My Data self-service is an ANDS online service that allows individuals to manually register a collection description and to obtain a persistent identifier for the collection. Collection descriptions will be stored in the ANDS Collections Registry and will be publicly discoverable through Research Data Australia. To be registered, collections must be accessible online.

The individual who enters the collection description information is responsible for any required future updates to this information.
ANDS registers your collection description; ANDS does not store the collection itself. You retain control over access to items in the collection. Any special access considerations can be included in your collection description.

What is a persistent identifier?

A persistent identifier (PID) is a number or a code that is allocated to an object or a resource as a long lived identifier. Persistent identifiers provide a globally unique identification. Persistent identifiers can be used to create hyperlinks on a web page. When clicked on, the hyperlink will take the web-user to the URL associated with the identifier.

Persistent identifiers are useful because when an object or resource changes location on the internet, the persistent identifier does not change. The owner of the resource is able to update the persistent identifier database and change the object location associated with the persistent identifier. All links which use the persistent identifier will then point to the new location without the resource owner needing to update them.

How does it work?

Accessing Publish My Data

To use Publish My Data you need to have a user name and password that is valid within the pilot Australian Access Federation (AAF). If your organisation is not a member of the pilot AAF, you can create a username and password with the ARCS Identity Provider Service at: https://idp.arcs.org.au/idp_reg/

Once you have your AAF accreditation, ANDS online services can be accessed at: http://services.ands.org.au/home/orca/user/collection_add.php.

Describing your collection

Your research collection description must include:

• A collection type (is it a catalogue, a dataset, something else?);

• A collection title or name;

• A URL (internet address) where the collection is located; and

• A short description of the collection.

Your collection description may also include

• Information about other contributors;

• A list of relevant ANZSRC fields of research;

• A list of relevant subject keywords;

• Spatial coverage data; and

• Access rights information.

What happens next?

Collection descriptions entered using Publish My Data self-service are not immediately accepted into the ANDS Collection Registry or Research Data Australia. Descriptions are held in a pending state until an ANDS administrator approves the collection description. This is to ensure that obscene or malicious material is not published in Research Data Australia. This approval process will generally take less than 5 working days.

Publish My Data is underpinned by the ANDS Collections Registry. The ANDS Collections Registry is a software application that holds and manages collection description information. In the future, the ANDS Collections Registry will be federated with similar registries run by JISC in the UK and the NSF in the USA, to raise the profile of Australian research collections internationally.

Research Data Australia

Research Data Australia is a set of web pages describing data collections produced by or relevant to Australian researchers. It is designed to promote the visibility of research data collections in search discovery engines. The content of the Research Data Australia web pages comes from the ANDS Collections Registry. Research Data Australia includes pages on:

• Collections;

• Activities (undertakings related to the creation, update, or maintenance of a collection, such as a project);

• Services (mechanisms for gaining some kind of access to or information about a collection, such as an RSS feed); and

• Parties (persons or organisations that have some relationship to a collection, service, activity, or party).

When you create a collection description record with Publish My Data self-service a party record will be automatically created for you in Research Data Australia. You can view and edit this record.

Who is it for?

ANDS prefers to harvest collection description information automatically, at the institutional level, as this allows for the responsibility of ongoing maintenance of collection description information to rest with the institution. If your research collection is stored within your institution and your institution shares metadata with ANDS, you should not use Publish My Data self-service, as your collection will already be registered with ANDS.

However, ANDS recognises that this is not always possible. Publish My Data self-service is intended for use by researchers at organisations where there is no formal data archiving service and where ANDS has no distributed services in place.

Where can I get more information?

Further ANDS Guides (including guides on persistent identifiers) are available from: http://ands.org.au/guides/

You can view Research Data Australia at: http://services.ands.org.au

Information on the Australian Access Federation is available from: http://www.aaf.edu.au/

Information on the Australian Research Collaboration Service is available from: http://www.arcs.org.au/

Information about ANZSRC fields of research is available from: http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/4AE1B46AE2048A28CA25741800044242?opendocument

Contact us

If you have any questions or comments on ANDS Publish My Data self-service then please email: services@ands.org.au

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.