BootcampEPSRC: Restricting access to your data

Restricting access to your data
Section 6 of 7

Fence cropImage: Fence [cropped], Tama66, Public Domain

You are not expected to make all your data open by default. The general principle is ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’. There are a number of reasons why you might not be able to make your data openly available, such as:

  • The data belongs to a third party and you do not have permission to make it publicly accessible
  • The data contains personal information which you do not have permission to share openly
  • The data contains sensitive information which would harm UK national security if released
  • The data contains commercially sensitive information which would compromise unprotected intellectual property if released

Where possible, you should consider delaying the release of your data by applying an embargo, or sharing your data with access restrictions, rather than making your data completely closed. Information on the different access levels offered at the University’s data repository is available here. Any access restrictions, and the reasons for these restrictions, should be outlined in the metadata record describing your dataset. You should also mention this in your data access statement. Data access statements will be addressed later in this tutorial.

1. You have had a paper accepted for publication that reports work based on a dataset provided by a commercial partner. How should you make the supporting data available?