A definition of open data from SPARC, a non-profit advocacy organization for Open Content is as follows:

Open Data is research data that:

1. Is freely available on the internet;
2. Permits any user to download, copy, analyze, re-process, pass to software or use for any other purpose; and
3. Is without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.

Open Data typically applies to a range of non-textual materials, including datasets, statistics, transcripts, survey results, and the metadata associated with these objects. The data is, in essence, the factual information that is necessary to replicate and verify research results. Open Data policies usually encompass the notion that machine extraction, manipulation, and meta-analysis of data should be permissible.¹

1.  SPARC, licensed under CC-BY 4.0 and available at  https://sparcopen.org/open-data/. 

Complete this challenge if you have a dataset you want to share or have published already!

1. Choose a dataset(s) that you own to complete the tasks for this challenge.This could be a dataset you have published or plan to share.
2. Make the data more discoverable by submitting it to the UMB Data Catalog.
3. Fill out your information as the corresponding author. (To include in the catalog, the corresponding author is required to be from UMB)
4. Write a description of your dataset. If you need help or want to see examples, check out the Data Catalog LibGuide.
5. Answer if the your dataset(s) publicly available:
   • If Yes, please provide a persistent identifier, such as a DOI or persistent URL.
   • If No, please provide instructions for accessing your data, including how and where the dataset can be accessed (or how to request access).
6. Answer if you data has associated publications. 
   • If Yes, please provide a persistent identifier to the publication. This could be a journal article, report, or any other relevant document.
   • If No, that's okay! You can contact us to update a record with future associated publication(s).
7. You can add more metadata to describe your dataset if you would like – this is totally optional!
8. Click Send. Our team will work on adding a record for your dataset to the Data Catalog and you will hear from us when it is available. 

Potential Benefits of Open Data:

• Improved transparency, rigor, and reproducibility
• Increased collaboration opportunities
• Accelerated innovation and discovery
• Efficiency
• Increased research impact and visibility

Read more about these benefits from PLOS and SPARC.

Open Data Mandates

Increasingly federal funding agencies are moving toward requiring data sharing to increase equitable public access to results of research funded by tax-payer dollars. Two recent policy shifts to be aware of:

Complete this challenge if you don't have any data to share and publish in the UMB Data Catalog.

1. Explore open repositories and see if you can find some data related to your own research interests!
2. Create a citation for the data.