Research Software vs. Research Data II: Protocols for Research Data dissemination and evaluation in the Open Science context [version 2; peer review: 2 approved]

Background: Open Science seeks to render research outputs visible, accessible and reusable. In this context, Research Data and Research Software sharing and dissemination issues provide real challenges to the scientific community, as consequence of recent progress in political, legal and funding requirements. Methods: We take advantage from the approach we have developed in a precedent publication, in which we have highlighted the similarities between the Research Data and Research Software definitions. Results: The similarities between Research Data and Research Software definitions can be extended to propose protocols for Research Data dissemination and evaluation derived from those already proposed for Research Software dissemination and evaluation. We also analyze FAIR principles for these outputs. Conclusions: Our proposals here provide concrete instructions for Research Data and Research Software producers to make them more findable and accessible, as well as arguments to choose suitable dissemination platforms to complete the FAIR framework. Future work could analyze the potential extension of this parallelism to other kinds of research outputs that are disseminated under similar conditions to those of Research Data and Research Software, that is, without widely accepted publication procedures involving editors or other external actors and where the dissemination is usually restricted through the hands of the production team.