Researchers of the FHNW are encouraged to upload their data to a suitable discipline-specific data repository, as these repositories often offer customized services for specific disciplines (see re3data.org to search for a suitable solution). Zenodo can serve as a viable generic option.

The Zenodo Community of the FHNW is for the collection of datasets and other research outputs uploaded to Zenodo by researchers affiliated with the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland FHNW. Both public and restricted content is accepted, following the principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”.

The following types of records do not belong in the Zenodo Community of the FHNW: 

• Publications should be uploaded to the Institutional Repository FHNW (https://irf.fhnw.ch/). 

• Educational resources should be added to Switch OER (https://oer.switch.ch/). 

All records are checked by one of the community’s curators to ensure that they comply with the following minimum requirements: 

• Authors: Contact info for at least one author must be provided, ideally with a persistent identifier (e.g., ORCID), and at least one author needs to be affiliated with the FHNW. 

• Description: Records need to contain a description that is sufficiently detailed. References to external articles or other external resources are not sufficient. 

• Licenses: Records must specify a license, which should be as open as possible (e.g., CC BY, CC 0). In case of closed records, information on how and under which conditions the data may be accessed needs to be provided.

In addition, the following metadata and documentation are strongly recommended: 

• Languages: The main language(s) of the record should be specified. 

• Funding: If records are related to funded research, records should specify relevant grant/awards information. 

• Keywords and subjects: Records should contain relevant keywords and specify one or more fields of science (e.g., from the European Science Vocabulary). 

• Institutions: The institutions for all authors should be provided, ideally with a persistent identifier (e.g., ROR) 

• ReadMe file: If the record consists of more than one document, there should be a clearly identifiable ReadMe file, providing additional information on the record. 

The data itself is not checked by the curators of the community. The uploaders of the data are themselves responsible for ensuring that their data and additional metadata meet relevant standards, follow Zenodo’s general policies and Terms of Use , and that no restrictions exist (e.g., legal, data protection, contractual agreements) that hinder the data from being uploaded to Zenodo.

For more information and support, please contact the FHNW research support (forschungssupport@fhnw.ch) or the FHNW library (openness@fhnw.ch).