The release of research data, associated metadata, accompanying documentation, and software code (in cases where the raw data have been processed or manipulated) for re-use and analysis in such a manner that they can be discovered on the Web and referred to in a unique and persistent way. Data publishing occurs via dedicated data repositories and/or (data) journals which ensure that the published research objects are well documented, curated, archived for the long term, interoperable, citable, quality assured and discoverable – all aspects of data publishing that are important for future reuse of data by third party end-users.
