Once you have identified Open Data of relevance to your project, and made use of it inside of your project, you can publish it within a container that allows easy and up-to-date use from a range of programming languages (Python, R, Julia, JavaScript, etc.) and tools (Dribdat, Dataworld, Superset, PowerBI, etc.)

Here are example instructions for use within the R language:

If your data is not Open, or needs to be protected in some way, a Data Package which contains only the metadata can still be very useful to people who would like to contact you for more information about your research. They would be able to see a schema, or even a sample of the data, in a convenient and standard way.

How to create a Data Package

🌊 The source of the sample data in this guide is opendata.swiss.

(1) Create a tabular dataset

Download a spreadsheet (e.g. get a copy of the data shown above), and convert the worksheet containing the data to a CSV file. Preview:

(2) Generate a Data Package

Use the Data Package Creator to upload your CSV file (click Load at the top right), then Add Fields to show all the columns. Check the various field settings, add metadata (name, title, license, etc.) on the left hand column, and finally Validate and Download your Data Package.

📦 Frictionless Data: datapackage.json

You can also Upload the example shown above into the Creator tool.

(3) Next steps

To find out how to publish the Data Package in such a way that it is accessible to a general audience, visit the Software Toolkit page of the Frictionless Data project. For example, uploading to Datahub.io allows the use of VEGA visualizations and embedded maps.

🗺️ Map: map.geo.admin.ch

Compare this to the GeoAdmin map of the data above, as well as the Opendata.swiss "Preview" tool shown at the top of the page, which depends on user interaction.