4-2-where-to-publish.qmd

## Where to publish

When people write the following:

> *The data/code will be made available upon request.*

This usually means:

> *Once the PhD student who wrote this paper leaves their position, the
> data/code will be lost in space.*

Am I right? But how can you do better? How can you make your research outputs
available?

### Publish in a repository

Publish your research outputs in a repository. You basically have three
options here:

-   A general purpose service (e.g. [Zenodo](https://zenodo.org/) or
    [Open Science Framework](https://osf.io/)),
-   The service of your institution (e.g. [Open Data
    LMU](https://data.ub.uni-muenchen.de/) or [ETH Zurich's Research
    Collection](https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/?locale-attribute=en)),
-   A field or project specific service (e.g. a specific repository for
    [high throughput sequencing data](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra)
    or [CRAN](https://cran.r-project.org/) for R-Packages)
    
A field specific service that is currently being built for the BERD community is
the BERD Portal (see video).

{{< video https://youtu.be/nfNz83Wde0k?si=YL2vIP6_LESe8mmi >}}

Please make sure to use a trustworthy service. How to check if a service
is trustworthy? My rule of thumb is that services that have investor
backing (e.g. Figshare) are less trustworthy than services backed by the
research community (e.g. Zenodo, which is developed by OpenAIRE and
CERN). Why? Well, I think an Open Science service should not be driven
primarily by commercial goals. At some point commercial services will
take money from you, if that may be by selling your data, by locking
your uploaded material behind a pay wall, or in another way.

### Publish with the paper

Some journals offer to publish your research outputs with your paper. I
will be honest, I have mixed feelings about this. Not all journals which
offer this, really have the expertise to do so and they don't
necessarily have the possibility to store data long term. For one of my
papers we uploaded the material with the journal, but the link to the
material keeps vanishing and I keep getting the confused emails of
interested readers. So, make sure the journal you upload your material
to, ensures long term storage and availability 🧐.

### If your research outputs cannot be shared openly

What should you do if you cannot publish your research outputs openly?

If you have sensitive data (e.g. patient data) and no consent, do not publish the data! There
are other options for you.

If for any reason you cannot share your research outputs, think of
options how you can still ensure that others can trust in the
reproducibility of your research.

- Can you maybe publish the metadata and the code? 
- Can you publish a synthetic version of your data? 
- Can you share the data with specific people (e.g. researchers in the same field)? 

Brainstorm with your peers, librarians, or IT support. There
are always solutions that are better than publishing nothing.


### Further reading

-   [Zenodo Guide](https://www.openaire.eu/zenodo-guide)
-   [How create an OSF
    project](https://help.osf.io/article/252-create-a-project)