Access and sharing conditions

How will other people access your data? How secure does your data need to be?

If you choose to use an archive or repository to share your data, they may have different levels of access that you can choose for your data.

The UK Data Service classifies data according to their level of detail, sensitivity and confidentiality, into three access levels: open data, safeguarded data, and controlled data. Both safeguarded and controlled data have stricter controls on their access and use.

Governments and research funders are increasingly supporting open research principles and encouraging data to be open access, where this is possible.

If your data contains a range of information that is less or more disclosive, consider splitting up the data into multiple categories, e.g., safeguarded and secure. Not all users will require the more disclosive information.

This ensures that users who only want to use the less secure data can access and use your data more easily and saves them from having to go through the more complex data access steps unnecessarily.