About Research Data

The long-term approach to research data and their accessibility form the basis of successful research data management. Various institutions, research funders and publishers therefore provide guidelines for the way research data should be handled:

• University of Mannheim: Code of Good Research Practice at the University of Mannheim
• German Research Foundation (DFG): Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Practice
• European Commission: H2020 Programme – Guidelines on FAIR Data Management in Horizon 2020
• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding
• Nature: Availability of data, material and methods

The  SHERPA/JULIET database collects information on the requirements of international research funding institutions.

Research data are published in institutional or specialist repositories. The  Repository of Research Data Repositories  (re3data) provides an overview of the landscape of research data repositories.

Specialist repositories are intended for the community of a specific subject – regardless of the institutional connection. Specialist repositories are, for example:

• Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften (GESIS)): datorium for social and economic sciences
• Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education (Deutsches Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung (DIPF)): Forschungsdaten Bildung – research data for educational sciences
• Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information (Leibniz-Zentrum für Psychologische Information und Dokumentation (ZPID)): PsychData for psychology

MADATA is the research data repository of the University of Mannheim. It enables the researchers of the university to archive their data securely and to make it accessible as required.

MADATA services:

• Storage of all types of electronic data
• Permanent backup on data center servers
• Choice of accessibility: personal, university-wide or worldwide
• Persistent addressability and citability by assigning a Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
• Visibility through verification in national and international research data directories such as re3data.org

Similar to other publications, the publication of research data is the final step in the research process. Research data should not be published in a repository until the final version is available.

If you need a repository for “living” research data, you can use a service like bwSync&Share . There you can store data flexibly and online so that you can access it together with your colleagues.