Posted February 27, 2026 by Office of Research and Innovation
The following is a guest column from Alian Kasabian, research data and security liaison with the Office of Research and Innovation. The “Year of Data” is a yearlong campaign to bring attention to campus resources and educational resources related to research data. The campaign kicked off in September 2025 and runs through April 2026, with monthly topics related to research data management and the research data life cycle.
Data never dies. That’s not really true, but we hold on to data for a lot of different reasons, including ongoing research, contractual or regulatory requirements, good intentions for future use, or maybe because we forgot about it. Whatever the reason for holding on, the data needs to be managed, so we can carry on with what we need to do while being good data stewards. There are many possible ways forward, but we are focusing on University of Nebraska-Lincoln resources for sharing data and sustainability.
The UNL Libraries are a foundational partner for data sharing and sustainability. On March 6, the Libraries will host a virtual workshop, Prepare Your Data for Openness, from noon to 1:15 p.m. This presentation will provide strategies for meaningfully open data, offer choices in data sharing, describe some limitations of openness, and help researchers get a jump start preparing data for openness. This workshop is an Open Data Day 2026 event, and registration is required.
The Libraries offer several relevant workshops throughout the year, but your needs may be more narrowly focused. The relevance of resources depends on the status of your data. Are you in the planning stages? Currently interacting with it and need to share it with a collaborator outside of UNL? Are you preparing it for sharing in a repository or journal? Or maybe you are basically looking for a retirement home for data you don’t need right now but need to save for … reasons.
Before or during a project, you can utilize a data management and sharing plan. While required for many federal funders, they’re also a helpful tool to think through the longevity of your data and build in processes to support sharing and storage. The early bird gets to focus more on the fun stuff later because they planned ahead. The Libraries can provide advice and resources and have collated some in this LibGuide. They also have a Canvas Commons module targeted to graduate students: Essentials of Data Management and Creating Your Plan: Information for Graduate Students from UNL Libraries.
The NuRamp Agreements module is where you can request Data Transfer and Use Agreements (DTUA) and Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs). These are required when data or tangible materials are shared between UNL and external parties. This article has more information on the new module.
If you have high performance computing needs, Holland Computing Center has various data storage and transfer capabilities. Besides active, high-performance data scratch space and project storage, HCC also provides a paid long-term nearline archive storage system. There are limits to what types of data can be stored at HCC, so make sure to review the website and/or check with HCC staff. In addition to high-performance storage systems, HCC also provides multiple data transfer methods to share data within the University system and external collaborators. (You should also have a DTUA or contractual agreement before sharing data with external parties.)
And of course, there is SANDY (Stewarding Nebraska Data) – the data repository designed for public, open-access research data sharing for those affiliated with the University of Nebraska. SANDY has a user-friendly online template to make depositing and sharing research data straightforward, especially if you practice the following tips:
- Deposit datasets that can be shared openly (e.g., without personally identifiable information or GIS coordinates of private land with no permission granted).
- Complete all required fields in the template.
- Make the title of the data deposit descriptive. For example, if the data are supporting a publication, the title entered in the web template could be “Data Supporting the Manuscript/Publication “[title of paper].”
- Enter an ORCID for yourself and your coauthors. To register for your free ORCID profile, visit https://orcid.org.
- If you are associated with a research center, institute or bureau, and/or used a core facility during the research, enter that information.
- If the work required IRB review, enter the approval number.
- Acknowledge your funders by completing the funding source information.
- Upload all files that assist in understanding the dataset (e.g., code book, data dictionary, ReadMe file).
- Allow one business day for curators to thoroughly review your deposit.
For any questions about using SANDY, please visit Depositing Research Data with SANDY and/or contact datamanagement@unl.edu.
The Research Data website also has videos and general guides about data sharing. Thanks to Andrea Koeber, Office of Research and Innovation; Caughlin Bohn, HCC; and Leslie Delserone, University Libraries; for providing information about resources. This is the second-to-last month of the Year of Data. Thank you to all who have participated so far!
