Finishing your research

The data policy of Wageningen University & Research acknowledges the code from The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), which stipulates to secure your data and keep it available for a period of 10 years.

WUR adopted this requirement from the Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity, which means researchers and PhD students are required to keep their data available for this period. 

Get help publishing your data sets and linking them to your publications
You can choose or be required to publish your data. The Data Desk offers several publishing services (see 'Publishing, registering and linking your data set'), making use of the infrastructure of DANS-EASY, 4TU.ResearchData and Zenodo. We then make the data sets visible in Research@WUR and link them to the appropriate publications.

Get help linking your source code to your publications
If you publish your source code through Git@WUR and want it linked to the appropriate publications, contact the Data Desk.

More information:

Frequently asked questions

Wat are the minimum data retention periods?

Raw research data should be kept for at least ten years. The Code of Conduct for Academic Practice states you have to make the data available on request to other academic practitioners, unless legal requirements dictate otherwise. Journals and learned societies may also demand a certain data retention period which is never shorter than ten years.

When I leave Wageningen University & Research, where should my data be kept?

Check the data policy of your chair group to see whether any specific arrangements have been made for keeping your data after your research project ends. Following WUR’s research data policy, any data sets underlying research data should be archived in a repository.

What options do I have to publish my research data?

WUR’s research data policy stipulates that you should archive data sets in a repository if these data sets underlie any publications. The policy gives various archiving options for these, such as the national data repositories DANS-EASY and 4TU.ResearchData. Find pages about publishing, linking and registering your data set under ‘Finishing your research’ for more information.

Should I publish all of my data or can I make a selection?

Following the WUR data policy, data sets that underlie publications must be archived in a data repository. These data sets should include all data files and documentation needed to reuse the data and verify any results presented in the publication. Data sets that do not underlie any publications can also be published – this is in fact recommended if these data sets can be of value to other researchers. The flow chart below may help you to decide on whether to publish your research data.

Stroomschema Data Publication

What can I do if I can't publish my data because of privacy or other issues?

If publishing your data Open Access is not ethical or legal, you still have to make your data available on request for verification purposes. You may consider publishing your data set with restricted access and allow the data to be found by openly describing the data set and how it may be accessed. See also ‘Where to publish your data set’ and the ‘Data Sharing guidelines’ for more information’.

Can Wageningen University & Research help me link my research data/source code and articles?

Yes, we can. Once your data set/source code is published we can assign a persistent identifier, register your data sets/source code in Research@WUR and link them to the accompanying publications. In this way the visibility of both your data sets/source code and your publications is enhanced. See ‘How to register and link your data set’ for more information or contact the Data Desk.