Research data management and open data
In the CERN Open Science Office, we are committed to assisting the CERN community in developing data management strategies, preserving valuable data in the long term and connecting research communities with open data published by the CERN community. We currently in the process of developing detailed data management recommendations. If you have specific questions regarding research data management and data access, please contact the CERN’s Research Data Management Support.
How do I plan, store, and version my data? Where to best publish my data? How do I ensure my data is preserved long-term?
How can I access and use data published by the experiments at CERN?
Research data management
Research Data Management (RDM) refers to the organization of research data before, during and after the research process, including data collection, processing, open release and long term preservation. Considerations on research data management should begin before active data taking (e.g., writing of data management plans) and continue after projects are retired (e.g., long term preservation).
Questions related to research data management involve complex ethical, legal and technical considerations. The CERN Open Science Office currently works on developing a set of guidelines for data management that assist researchers in navigating these considerations. If you have concrete questions and requests, do not hesitate to contact CERN’s Research Data Management Support.
Data Management Plans
Data Management Plans (DMPs) have become a requirement for projects, grants and stipends around the world, i.e. in CERN’s member states. Many researchers in the CERN community are therefore tasked to regularly write and update Data Management Plans. Conceptualizing DMPs at the beginning of a research project and monitoring their implementation throughout ongoing operation contributes to ensuring the longevity of projects and their research results. CERN provides templates for DMPs as well as support and guidance for anyone with questions or concerns regarding their DMP. To receive case specific guidance, please contact CERN’s Research Data Management Support.
You can find the CERN Data Management Plan template here:
The DMPonline portal additionally provides access to a large range of public DMPs that address specific funder requirements.
Publishing data
Many funding agencies and institutions require researchers to publish their research data openly. In the collaborations working at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), data access and publication is governed by the Open Data Policy for the LHC experiments. Some CERN collaborations additionally have experiment-specific data access and open data policies.
Where and how you deposit your research data depends on the type of data and the context of your research, including relevant policies and funding requirements. Below is a selection of repositories commonly used in High Energy Physics and related fields. If you are unsure about where to publish your data, or what funding and policy requirements apply to your data, do not hesitate to get in contact with CERN’s Research Data Management Support.
CERN Open Data Portal
The CERN Open Data Portal is a repository that enables large scale experimental data releases of curated datasets (both collision and simulated data), accompanying software, supporting documentation and example analysis. It is principally used by the large LHC collaborations (CMS, ATLAS, ALICE, LHCb), but also hosts legacy datasets from completed CERN experiments and data from smaller LHC collaborations.
The publication of data on the Open Data Portal is coordinated on the experiment level. If you are unsure whether your collaboration is already publishing data on the Open Data Portal, please contact CERN’s Research Data Management Support.
For any request or submission, please send an email to opendata-support@cern.ch. You can also post your question in the CERN Open Data Forum.
HEPData
High-level data associated with HEP publications, such as machine readable plots and tables, are deposited in HEPData. The submission process for HEPData is coordinated at the experiment level. Contact your collaboration’s submission coordinator to initiate the process.
More information on the HEPData website:
CERN Repository
The CERN Repository (also known as “new CDS”) is CERN’s institutional repository. Next to articles, reports and multimedia content, the CERN repository can host datasets. If you want to upload datasets to the CERN repository, please contact the Open Science Office.
Please note that the IT Department and Scientific Information Service are currently in the process of migrating content from the “old CDS” to the CERN Repository. Detailed instructions on metadata standards, consultation requirements, and upload procedures for repository.cern are therefore currently being developed.
Other Non-HEP Disciplinary Repositories
If your discipline has an established, domain-specific repository that is widely used and trusted by the community, this may be the most suitable space to upload your data.
You can use the meta-repository re3data to search for suitable repositories:
Zenodo
Zenodo is a catch-all repository hosted at CERN and funded by the European Union. It is a discipline overarching repository and can be used to exchange research materials in cases where no dedicated discipline-specific repository is available.
Please refer to the Zenodo website for further guidance on how to upload data:
Data licensing: Data licensing defines the legal conditions under which published datasets can be reused by others. The most suitable licence for your data depends on its nature and how you intend to share it. For concrete licensing advice, please contact CERN’s Research Data Management Support.
Open data access and use
The CERN community releases diverse types of data publicly. Next to publishing research data, the community releases a range of open data that can be used in education contexts. If you are interested in using open data released by the CERN community, don’t hesitate to get in touch with CERN’s Research Data Management Support. Here is a selection of venues where research data created by the CERN community can be accessed:
CERN Open Data Portal
The CERN Open Data portal is the access point to a growing range of research data produced by the experiments at CERN. It disseminates the preserved output from various research activities and includes accompanying software and documentation needed to understand and analyse the data. The CERN open data portal additionally gives access to a set of educational resources developed by the LHC experiments:
Since the data formats are very different for each of the experiments, there are also individual start pages for the open data of the experiments:
HEPData
HEPData has been built up over the past four decades as a unique open-access repository for scattering data from experimental particle physics. It currently comprises the data points from plots and tables related to several thousand publications including those from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Access to educational resources
The CERN community makes data that can be used in educational contexts available on various sites. For detailed information please refer to the this page.
Please note that further guidelines are currently being developed and will be added in the course of 2026.