In a recent post (“Open data for the busy researcher”), Richard D. Morey suggests an easy way to share data.  The hardest part is getting started.  The following steps make it easy to “ease in” to the process of making your data available.

“Create an OSF page for the project. If you’ve never used OSF before, you may have to create an account, but this is easy. If you need help, there are guides.”

“Add a README file describing the project (perhaps title and abstract, and, importantly, your contact information). Say that the data/materials for the project will be placed there, and in the meantime, people who want access to the data/materials should contact you. This is a “stub” OSF page, awaiting your later additions.”

“Add the link to this OSF page in your manuscript (perhaps in the author note). Write something like “Information about obtaining data and materials underlying this paper can be found at X.” where X is your OSF page’s URL.”

“When you have time — hopefully before the paper is formally published — populate the OSF page.”

“To do everything I’ve described above takes only a few minutes, at most, except for the last step. Consider the worst case scenario: you forget to upload the materials/data. Then a curious researcher simply emails you as would be typical, and asks you for it. The link to the OSF page points to your contact information, so nothing is lost.”

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