Policies for Data and Datasets

Table of Contents

General statement
Data collected at the repository (Data Collection Policy)
How people can use your material (End-User Access Policy)
What you need to agree to in order for us to host and share your work (Deposit License)
Language for use in the grant-writing process
Registering your data in ScholarWorks

General Statement

Part of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst, the Data & Datasets Repository is subject to the following data-specific policies. Policies and Terms are subject to change.

Data Collected at the Repository (Data Collection Policy)

The Data Repository is managed by the University Libraries. Digital research data, digital research artifacts, and digital research materials (henceforth referred to as “data”) meeting the below criteria are accepted:

  • Data must be authored by at least one University of Massachusetts Amherst researcher with an active UMass NetID at time of deposit.
  • Data must be unclassified data, meaning data without private, confidential, or other legally protected information (e.g., personal identifiable information, direct identifiers).
    • Please contact us for assistance locating a repository for protected research data or confidential data.
    • For more examples of identifiers that may be considered a breach of confidentiality, please see the guidance here: https://datadryad.org/pages/humanSubjectsData
  • Data must be deposited for open access. Visitors to the Data Repository may download and reuse your data.
  • File upload and download speeds are dependent upon your network connection. We suggest limiting files to 5 GB for upload, however larger files are able to be deposited. Please contact us at dwg@library.umass.edu to discuss data sets larger than 5 GB or that you are having trouble uploading.
  • Word files are automatically converted to .pdf files and have a limit of 800 MB. Please contact the Data Working Group at dwg@library.umass.edu to discuss larger Word files.
  • A readme file describing the nature of the data must accompany your data deposit. All data depositors must complete a readme file as part of acceptance into the repository. The readme file template is available at https://scholarworks.umass.edu/data/readme.txt and more information on readme files and example readme files are available at https://scholarworks.umass.edu/data/guidelines.html
    • .
  • The data should be in a final, reusable state. Data that is not reusable should not be shared in the Data Repository.
    • We offer versioning for multi-year projects and project corrections.
    • We suggest cleaning your data, including deduplication, correction, and normalization. Tools such as OpenRefine can be used to assist with this process. Please contact the Data Working Group at dwg@library.umass.edu for more information and suggestions.
  • The individuals uploading the data have the responsibility to make sure that they have the necessary rights or permissions to share any materials they did not generate.
  • The individuals uploading the data have the responsibility to make sure that they have permission or lawful authorization (such as fair use) for data that contain third-party copyrighted materials.

Please contact the Data Working Group at dwg@library.umass.edu if you have questions or specific inquiries.

How People Can Use Your Material (End-User Access Policy)

The Data & Datasets Repository is an open access repository and makes holdings freely available. End-users may download and use posted materials in any manner not prohibited by copyright or other applicable law and subject to the ScholarWorks Terms of Use. Although ScholarWorks does not grant end-users any rights in the posted material, some authors may choose to apply a Creative Commons license to their data. This gives end-users clarity around the use of the data without seeking permission and as allowed by the Creative Commons license.

What You Need To Agree To In Order For Us To Host and Share Your Work (Deposit License)

Before submitting, please read all relevant policies and/or submission guidelines.

The submission process consists of the following steps:

  • Read and accept the Submission Agreement
  • Provide information about yourself and any co-authors
  • Provide basic information about the data you are uploading
  • Select the appropriate Creative Commons license
    • A Creative Commons Zero (CC0) or a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY 4.0) license allows for broadest re-use of your data. These are the two options available for sharing your data with ScholarWorks.
    • You can learn more about licensing data here: https://opendefinition.org/licenses
    • Open Definition offers a more general guide to open data licensing here: https://opendefinition.org/licenses/
    • If you have more questions about licensing your data, please contact the Data Working Group at dwg@library.umass.edu.
  • Upload your digital file and associated files, or link out to a file on a remote site

Before you begin, please be sure you have the following items:

  • The submission's title
  • The abstract (up to 250 words)
  • The completed README.txt
  • A list of keywords (10 maximum)
  • The electronic format of your file, or hyperlink to your file (maximum size of 5 GB, 800 MB for Word files)

Language For Use In The Grant-Writing Process

Feel free to use the language below when filling out grants that require dissemination and sharing of data, or modify it to fit your needs. Please note that the Data Repository can only accept data that is openly available - we are unable to provide restricted access to data.

If you need further assistance with language for a grant, please see Florida International University’s boilerplate library at http://research.fiu.edu/proposal-preparation/templates/#data. For further inquiries or assistance, contact the Data Working Group at dwg@library.umass.edu.

A data sharing plan will be used to store and make publicly accessible the data beyond the life of the project. The data will be deposited into the ScholarWorks@UMass Data Repository, https://scholarworks.umass.edu/data. This University Libraries’ hosted institutional data repository is an open access platform for dissemination and long-term sharing of university research data. In addition, the ScholarWorks@UMass Data Repository provides long-term storage for data files and maintains persistent DOIs for data sets, facilitating data citations. In accordance to ScholarWorks@UMass Data Repository policies, the [deidentified, if applicable] data will be accompanied by the appropriate documentation, metadata, and code to facilitate reuse and provide the potential for interoperability with similar data sets.

Registering your Data In ScholarWorks

There may be situations where you do not want to deposit your data in ScholarWorks. For example, you may intend to deposit your data in a repository specific to your discipline instead. If this is the case, you can register your data in ScholarWorks. By registering your data in ScholarWorks, you increase the potential for your work to be discovered and reused by other researchers. To register your data, you will provide information (metadata) describing the data, along with the location of the data. Please contact the Data Working Group if you have questions, or would like more information about data registration.

Policies used in the creation of this document:

General Statement DRUM
Data Collection Policy DRUM
End-User Access Policy DRUM, eScholarship@UMMS
Deposit License DRUM, ScholarWorks
Submission Agreement DRUM, ScholarWorks
Boilerplate language for grants DRUM, Florida International University
Registering Data University of Nebraska-Lincoln



Creative Commons License
UMass Amherst Policies for Data and Datasets by ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.