Research data is all data produced during a research project designed to produce original scientific results. Research data (depending on the discipline to which it pertains) can be very diverse, such as: text documents, surveys, numerical data, mathematical models, audio and video recordings, photographs, algorithms, results of computer simulations, laboratory protocols, methodological descriptions, etc.

Open research data is data available via the Internet, disseminated without any restrictions. This means that you can use them without charge and without significant technical and legal restrictions. Data should be as open as possible and as closed as necessary.

Opening the data gives you the opportunity to verify the results and reuse them.  Please note that sharing research data is not the same as publishing a work that describes the results of the research/experiment.

Not all data sets can be open in nature, particularly in the case of personal data, commercialization of research results, and national security.
Information about the existence of data should always be publicly available, thus avoiding duplication of research.
 

Opening up research data offers a number of benefits to researchers:
• better communication and exchange of information between specialists representing various scientific disciplines;
• possibility of conducting analyses based on unique data that cannot be collected again;
• increase in the number of citations of both the data itself and publications based on it;
• increase of credibility and transparency of a researcher;
• possibility of assessing the reliability of conducted research;
• possibility of using existing resources and lowering the costs of research. 

Guidelines have been developed for the appropriate development and sharing of data, which should be:
Findable – easy to be found,
Accessible – available in, for example, a data repository,
Interoperable – described in an appropriate standard and using a valid methodology,
Reusable – made available for reuse based on an appropriate license.

FAIR principles were created to make data accessible to both users and computer software searching databases without human intervention.

Read more about FAIR Data: FAIRdata Initiative.

Guide of the European Commission on data management according to FAIR principles in “Horizon 2020” program
 

Data Management Plan (DMP) defines how research data are to be managed during the research project as well as after the project is completed. Institutions and programs funding research are increasingly often requiring researchers to submit a DMP at the stage of submitting and evaluating grant applications (e.g., Horizon 2020).
The National Science Centre (NCN) made it mandatory in 2019 to include an abbreviated research data management plan with the application for funding research projects, which will be completed in the final report and evaluated by NCN upon project completion.

The DMP should include descriptions in English of the following:
· the type and formats of research data and how they will be acquired (what data will be produced),
· how data will be collected and described (metadata standards),
· how data will be made available and how they can be reused and transformed,
· ethical and legal issues (intellectual property, copyright),
· how data will be archived and how the access to it will be ensured, i.e. where it will be archived and for how long

Recommended websites:
DMPTool – an online tool for creating data management plans with examples (tailored to requirements of American funders).
DMPonline – a research data management plan wizard featuring a database of institutions funding research from the Great Britain.
Checklist for a Data Management Plan – a checklist to help verify the accuracy of a prepared DMP.
 

Research data is made available through various repositories (disciplinary, institutional, etc.) such as:

RepOD – an Open Data repository developed by IMC UW (Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling at the University of Warsaw). As part of activities of the Open Science Platform (in Polish: Platforma Otwartej Nauki), it archives and makes available all data produced, collected and compiled for scientific research. Designed for the so-called small data.

Zenodo – an international repository of research data. It enables researchers from all areas of knowledge to easily archive and share the research data they have developed. Designed for the so-called small data. Developed thanks to the OpenAIRE initiative and CERN.

NIH Research Data Repositories – the American National Institutes of Health contribute to and promote a number of specialized research data repositories, and many of them make available so-called "big data" collected from specific projects. The NIH website presents a table describing the various repositories, providing information on their degree of openness and procedures for placing data there.

Bridge of Data – a project in which an institutional repository of open research data will be created at the Gdańsk University of Technology (PG) to serve not only PG but also consortium members: University of Gdańsk and Medical University of Gdańsk. It will be possible to expand access to the platform to other universities in the region and the country.

Search engines to help you choose the right repository:

re3data.org (Registry of Research Data Repositories) is a global search engine for research data repositories. It collects research data from all academic disciplines. It allows you to search repositories by field of knowledge, country, and research data type. 

OpenDOAR – an international database indexing digital libraries, institutional repositories, and research data repositories. The database allows you to find the needed repositories as well as search their content.

Repository Finder Tool – a search engine created under the project: AGU’s Enabling FAIR Data Project. Developed by the DataCite and re3data.org teams, 

Research data management plan – frequently asked questions (National Science Centre)

Practical guide on standardized European practices related to scientific data management (Science Europe). NCN Recommended Guide.

Guide developed by the European Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA)

Handbook available on-line on research data management

Handbook  available on-line on open access and research data management


European Commission Guides:

European Commission's guidelines  to the rules on open access to scientific publications and open access to research data in Horizon 2020

European Commission’s guidelines on data management in Horizon 2020

Guidelines on FAIR data management in Horizon 2020

On-line Courses:

MANTRA – a free course for students, researchers and librarians developed at the University of Edinburgh,

Research Data Management and Sharing – a free MOOC course available on the Coursera platform conducted by staff from The University of North Carolina on Chapel Hill and the University of Edinburgh

Metadata models:

Research Data Alliance (RDA) Metadata Standards – a catalog of RDA metadata standards.

FAIRsharing – a search engine for standards and metadata linked to disciplinary repositories

Digital Curation Centre Standards – a list of widely used metadata standards. 
 

Data journal – an academic journal that publishes articles describing research datasets made available in data repositories or (rarely) as a supplement to the article itself. These publications are peer-reviewed and counted as academic achievement.

Data management plan – see data management plan.

DMP – see data management plan.
 
DOI (Digital Object Identifier) – a digital identifier permanently assigned to an electronic document, allowing it to be found on the Internet regardless of the URL leading to it. 
 
Embargo – a period of time during which research data cannot be made available to the public. It is typically used to obtain related patents and/or other intellectual property rights and prepare scientific publications based on them. After the expire of the period, publishing research data becomes possible.

FAIR – an acronym for "findable", "accessible", "interoperable" and "reusable," which defines the requirements that the research data made available should meet.

Interoperability – a characteristic of data that can be combined with other data, used in many different computer systems, and analyzed using a variety of software.

License – authorization to use a work or database in a specific way. The subject of a license may be, for example, a set of research data.

Creative Commons licenses – popular license templates developed by the Creative Commons organization.
 
Metadata – or data about data. A set of information about a specific set of research data. It contains information about the form and content of resources so that they can be searched, identified, and managed. There are general, universal (e.g., Dublin Core, Date Cite, DAta Documentation Initiative) and disciplinary metadata standards.

NCN – National Science Centre.

ORCID (Open Research and Contributor ID) – a digital identifier used to uniquely identify authors of scientific publications.
 
Data Management Plan (DMP) – is a formal document that describes what will happen to the data during and after the research project. It has the character of a "living document" that can and should change as changes occur in other areas of the research project.

Repository – an information system for storing scientific publications or research data and making them available via the Internet.