Making your materials public

Basic guidelines for authors

  • Share source code, where ever possible. Compiled code cannot be checked easily for flaws. The source code and any necessary instructions for compiling it should be shared along with the binary executable code.
  • When possible, release your materials under an permissive copyright license. Other researchers who would like to replicate or extend your experiments should be able to do so without fear of infringing copyright.
  • If materials were generated algorithmically, describe the algorithm. Make the code for the stimulus generation publicly available along with the experimental code, if it is separate.
  • Use reliable hosting. Do not use personal cloud storage providers, or personal web hosts, to host your data. These are prone to be lost as you clean or reorganize your own files, or change website hosts. Use a third party designed for this purpose, such as the Open Science framework or a data journal/repository.

Helpful resources

  • Creative Commons offers many different licenses under which you can release your materials. For research-related materials, a license requiring attribution is probably most appropriate.
  • See the resources under Making your data public for information about where you can store your analyses. Repositories will typically accept stimulus materials, as long as they are related to the publication.

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