previous episode

FAIR on Demand

next episode

Access

Overview

Teaching: 40 min
Exercises: 10 min
Questions

  • What is protocol and authentication?

  • What are the types of transfer protocols?

  • What is data usage licence?

  • What is sensitive data?

Objectives

  • To illustrate what is the communications protocol and the criteria for open and free protocol

  • To give examples of databases that uses a protocol with different authentication process

  • To interpret the usage licence associated with different data sets

Access to the data

As a researcher, when you plan your research project, you have to determine who can have access to your data, how you will provide the access and under what condition. You do not need to wait after data collection to start thinking about the access to your data. To start writing your acces plan, first we will explain to you what are different types of data access, what is the best for you and how to write your data access plan

Types of access

there are four types of data access as explained by RDMkit:

To get more detailed explanation, check RDMkit explanation of data sharing

Exercise

Imagine you are a principle investigator writing data access plan, what are the factors you need to consider to determine the type of access for your data?

Solution

To know what to write for data access plan, you can use a tool called “Data stewardship wizard” that provides guidelines on the process of writing DMP for your research project. It has a full chapter on writing access plan. Let’s first explain what is data stewardship wizard

What is Data stewardship wizard (DSW)?

It is one of ELIXIR resources which helps you create your DMP. It uses a knowledge model, which includes information about what questions to ask » and how to ask them based on the needs of the research field or organisation. The knowledge model covers seven chapters:

  • Administrative information
  • Re-using data
  • Creating and collecting data
  • Processing data
  • Interpreting data
  • Preserving data
  • Giving access to the data

Figure 1. knowledge model for the DSW that covers 7 chapters, in this picture, you can see an example of topics covered in administrative >> >> information of DMP

For each of these topics, we have a set of questions that helps you write your DMP. For each question, there are tags that help you know funding bodies questions (Figure 2)

Figure 2. knowledge model for the DSW that covers 7 chapters, in this picture, you can see tags and topics covered by each chapter After introducing the DSW, let’s answer the following question, How to choose the right data access plan for you? Based on DSW, there are main four questions

  • Will you be working with the philosophy ‘as open as possible’ for your data?
  • Can all of your data become completely open over time?
  • Will you use temporary restrictions on the reuse of the data (embargo)?
  • Will metadata be available openly? For each of these questions, there is a follow-up questions based on your answer to the main question

One of things you have to consider in addition to the above criteria, is to determine the data usage licence for your data

Data usage licence

This describes the legal rights on how others use your data. As you publish your data, you should describe clearly in what capacity your data can be used. Bear in mind that description of licence is important to allow machine and human reusability of your data. There are many licence that can be used e.g. MIT licence or Common creative licence. These licences provide accurate description of the rights of data reuse, Please have a look at resources in the description box to know more about these licences.

Creative commons licences (photo credit: foter){alt=’alt text’}

Exercise

As you are uploading your data to a data repository, the following definitions are important for you to understand the type of access. Communication protocol and authentication are used by different databases to protect your data and control access to your data

Standard communication protocol

Simply put, a protocol is a method that connects two computers, the protocol ensure security, and authenticity of your data. Once the safety and authenticity of the data is verified, the transfer of data to another computer happens.

Having a protocol does not guarantee that your data are accessible. However, you can choose a protocol that is free, open and allow easy and exchange of information. One of the steps you can do is to choose the right database, so when you upload your data into database, the database executes a protocol that allows the user to load data in the user’s web browser. This protocol allows the easy access of the data but still secures the data.

Authentication process

It is the process that a protocol uses for verification. To know what authentication is, suppose we have three people named John Smith. We do not know which one submitted the data. This is through assigning a unique ID for each one that is interpreted by machines and humans so you would know who is the actual person that submitted the data. Doing so is a form of authentication and this is used by many databases like Zenodo, where you can sign-up using ORCID-ID allowing the database to identify you.

Figure 3. Authentication process and its importance

Exercise

After reading RDMkit guidelines on different protocol types, do you know what is the protocol used in arrayexpress?

Solution

As we explained before on how to use the RDMkit, going through the Protocols and safety of data transfer, you will find different types of protocols explained

From this part, you can understand that the protocol used for the arrayexpress is HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) (highlighted in yellow) » in the following figure Figure 4. RDMkit explnation of different types of protocol

Sensitive data

Sensitive data are type of data that, if made publicly available, could cause consequences for individuals, groups, nations, or ecosystems and need to be secured from unauthorised access. To determine whether your data is sensitive, you should consult national laws, which vary by country.

If your data is following this definition, you have to de-identify your data. Data deidentification is a process through which data cannot be identified through the study team nor the users of the data.

1- Data anonymization

2- Data Pseudonymization

Exercise

  • From the this RDMkit guideline on Sensitive data, can you out find what is the data anonymization and data pseudonymization?

    Solution

    The link we provided, provided a nice explanation on sensitive data and as you read the following section from RDMKit, definitions are the following: Data anonymization is the process of irreversibly modifying personal data in such a way that subjects cannot be identified directly or indirectly by anyone, including the study team. If data are anonymized, no > one can link data back to the subject.

    Pseudonymization is a process where identifying-fields within data records are replaced by artificial identifiers called pseudonyms or pseudonymized IDs. Pseudonymization ensures no one can link data back to the subject, apart from nominated members of the study team who will be able to link pseudonyms to identifying > records, such as name and address.

If you are working with sensitive data, you have to declare the data permitted uses before using the data. In addition, if you are writing data management plan (DMP), you will have to mention the following:

To know what are the other steps you need to do and write, you can check DSW For sensitive data, the DSW have questions dedicated to describing the collection and processing of sensitive data.

Resources

Having your work licenced does not sound simple as it seems; here are some resources to help you find the > correct licence for you:

To get more information on sensitive data, you can have a look on these reources:

Key Points

  • {“This episode covers the following FAIR principles”=>nil}

  • (A1) (meta)data are retrievable by their identifier using a standardised communications protocol

  • (R1.1) meta(data) are released with a clear and accessible data usage licence

previous episode

next episode