Guideline for writing your Data Availability Statement
ZivaHub | Open Data UCT is powered by Figshare for Institutions, an online repository platform for discovering, citing and sharing research data and scholarly outputs. The purpose of this guide is to assist you with drafting a data availability statement for inclusion in your written research output.
The Process:
Data is uploaded to ZivaHub prior to submission of the ‘library copy’ .pdf into Peoplesoft in order to pre-reserve a doi. The doi is automatically generated through ZivaHub.
The doi is included - via copy & paste - in a Data Availability Statement at the beginning of your thesis, so that readers know where to access the metadata and data, as appropriate.
A number of options are available for data publishing, namely:
Open data publishing (files are uploaded to ZivaHub and are accessible, alongside metadata (descriptive information to help make the data discoverable and understandable).
Confidential data files (the files are securely stored, but are unavailable; the metadata is available).
Metadata-only record (no files are uploaded to ZivaHub, but a description of the study is available, including information about how to contact the authors for future communication).
Data can also be embargoed if required, to allow the author a period of sole use of the data (after clicking ‘save’, i.e. ‘publish,’ users are presented with a countdown).
About the UCT doi on ZivaHub:
A doi is an alphanumeric string beginning with ‘10’, i.e 10.25375/uct.7143581.v1. To make this resolve to a digital object, it needs to be prefixed with ‘https://doi.org/’, as per the example https://doi.org/10.25375/uct.7143581.v1, further explained in the table:
|
https:// |
doi.org/ |
10.25375/ |
uct. |
7143581. |
v1 |
|
A secure extension of HTTP. |
International DOI Foundation, who ensure that DOIs stay true. |
‘10’ is the standard doi directory code; ‘25375’ is the registrant code for ZivaHub. |
Indicates that the DOI originates from a UCT researcher or research project. |
Administrative sub-division code. |
Version number. |
Examples for Data Availability Statements
Sample statement (generic):
The data supporting this thesis can be accessed on the University of Cape Town’s institutional data repository (ZivaHub) under the following doi: ……………………………..
Sample statement (embargo period)
The data that support the findings will be available in [repository name] at [URL / DOI link] following a [6 month] embargo from the date of publication to allow for the commercialisation of research findings.
Example from Faculty of Science:
The data that support the findings will be available in ZivaHub at 10.23456/uct.examplelink following a 12-month embargo from the date of publication to allow for the commercialisation of research findings.
Sample statement (ethical Concerns)
Note: even if your data cannot be ethically shared, the metadata describing the study should still be made available as it builds your academic profile and may lead to future collaboration. UCT’s data repository ZivaHub (https://uct.figshare.com/) allows the creation of metadata-only records that can be used to describe a study without openly sharing data objects.
Example:
Due to ethical concerns, supporting data cannot be made openly available. Further information about the data and conditions for access are available at the University of Bath data archive: https://doi.org/10.15125/12345