How can I make my open data more discoverable?

Question

I want my research data to be reused, so I publish them on an open license in a data repository. What can I do to help other people find my data?

What are the good practices for creating metadata describing my data sets? How are data sets indexed by search engines? If discoverability is my goal, should I choose domain-specific data repositories, or generic ones (like Zenodo or Figshare)?

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Comments

I suggest you post each of the three questions in "What are the good practices for creating metadata describing my data sets? How are data sets indexed by search engines? If discoverability is my goal, should I choose domain-specific data repositories, or generic ones (like Zenodo or Figshare)?" as separate questions and link to them from this one.

This post has been migrated from the Open Science private beta at StackExchange (A51.SE)

Answer 1

From my experience, in any dissemination activity you should first think about two things:

1) Who is your core target audience? 2) Where does your core target audience search for datasets/what is the main community "hangout" in that respect?

This will give you a good indication where to put your data - and once you have figured that out, you can worry about DOIs, metadata and all the rest.

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