According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), "research data" are the factual records: numerical data, textual data, images and sounds. These documentation are used as primary sources for scientific research and are accepted by the research community as a means of validating conclusions. A research dataset is a systematic and partial representation of the subject or object studied.
Research data does not include laboratory notebooks, preliminary analyses, article drafts, future development plans, peer reviews, personal communications with colleagues, laboratory animals, specimens or strains.
It is important to make accessible open research data. This is one of the pillars of the Open Science movement, which aims to make the entire process and results freely available to society. Open data has undoubted benefits, such as:
It is very common that three types of data will exist before the research ends:
Choosing which data to keep depends mainly on how the research will be used:
In both cases, the documentation accompanying the data must be sufficiently clear to meet the above criteria.