Thesis Data Deposit

Questions on what to do with the research outputs you have?

Research materials and Data Deposit to support transparency and reproducibility

Scholarly research and communication is enhanced when research inputs in addition to the final polished culmination (thesis, dissertation, or other manuscript or scholarly product) are made available and connected to the final scholarly product.

These inputs may consist of protocols, data, scripts – if using a coding environment – or other intermediary products; what constitutes data or study inputs will differ by discipline and area of research. UBC offers several ways for you to deposit these content types in a way that supports your thesis, dissertation, and any other scholarly product that might emerge from this research.

While cIRcle is where you will deposit your thesis or dissertation, this is not necessarily the most appropriate place to deposit your other research inputs. Repositories dedicated to handling other content types help to keep this content organized, discoverable, and connected to your research outputs. UBC offers two additional repositories to help support deposit of research inputs: OSF and UBC Dataverse on Borealis.

Privacy, Security, and Ethics

What you write into your ethics application, consent forms, and other agreements with research partners or participants as well as the type of research you’re engaging in will determine what you can and cannot share as supplementary material.

When working with any information that might be considered sensitive, whether this be because of personal information, cultural ownership, copyright or other intellectual property rights, you should first consult with a privacy expert on what, where, and how, you might make this data or portions of it discoverable.

Contact

For support handling data that potentially has some privacy or security risk, you can contact:

Advanced Research Computing (support@ubc.ca)

Making the Connection

Connecting the various inputs and outputs from your research can be done in a couple of different ways.

In-text connections

cIRcle, OSF, and UBC Dataverse on Borealis deposits are citable and all provide the user with a digital object identifier (DOI) for persistent retrieval. Because of this, you can cite each of your deposits; for example, your thesis or dissertation might include a data availability statement with a citation to your upload to UBC Dataverse on Borealis. Your thesis or dissertation’s methods section might also indicate that you had a protocol, with a citation to your upload to OSF. These would all be discrete, in-text connections.

Contact

For support with data availability statements, please contact either:

Database record connections

cIRcle, OSF, and UBC Dataverse on Borealis also each allow for connecting other entities that are relevant to your deposit; so, for example, when looking at your thesis upload to cIRcle, you can include the DOI for any other relevant deposits made to cIRcle, UBC Dataverse on Borealis, or OSF as part of your Abstract/Description in the submission form.

Instructions

cIRcle

Connecting out When depositing into cIRcle, use the Abstract/Description field to include a sentence that describes any supporting materials and their DOIs.

Connecting in When you make a deposit in cIRcle, a DOI is automatically generated for you. You can use this DOI to connect your other works back to your cIRcle deposit.

UBC Dataverse on Borealis

Connecting out When depositing into Borealis, you will be prompted with an opportunity to add related or supplementary urls, this is where you can put in any related DOIs.

Connecting in When you make a deposit in Borealis a DOI is automatically generated for you.  You can use this DOI to connect your other works back to your Borealis deposit.

OSF

Connecting out When depositing into OSF, there are a number of ways of making connections to cIRcle and Borealis.

* Adding Dataverse as an add-on requires that you or your PI are set up with a dataverse within UBC’s dataverse (this may sound meta, but it’s fairly easy to set up!). For support with this, please contact Mathew Vis-Dunbar (mathew.vis-dunbar@ubc.ca ), Data & Digital Scholarship Librarian.

Connecting in When you make a deposit in Borealis, a DOI is automatically generated for you. You can use this DOI to connect your other works back to your Borealis deposit.

Contact

CIRcle: Marjorie Mitchell (Marjorie.Mitchell@ubc.ca), Copyright, Scholarly Communications, and Research Data Management Librarian

UBC Dataverse on Borealis: Eugene Barsky (eugene.barsky@ubc.ca), Research Data Management Librarian

OSF: Mathew Vis-Dunbar (mathew.vis-dunbar@ubc.ca ), Data and Digital Scholarship Librarian