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Experimental data

Guidance to help users access, analyse, manage, share, and publish their research data responsibly.

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ISIS users generate experimental data that support their research and publications. Guidance is provided to help manage, share, and publish data in line with facility, institutional, and funder policies.

All raw and reduced data are stored in the ISIS Data Catalogue, while additional analysis files should be deposited in appropriate repositories (disciplinary, institutional, or generalist). Creating a Data Management Plan (DMP) at the start of a project is recommended to outline how data will be handled and shared.

Publications should include a data access statement describing where supporting data can be found, its DOI, and any access restrictions. Researchers are encouraged to cite their ISIS data DOI to ensure transparency and traceability.

See our policy pages for more information.

Accessing data

All data produced at ISIS is catalogued into ICAT – the ISIS data catalogue – and is accessed via the Data Gateway or via your User Portal.

All experimental data and related metadata are automatically captured and stored. Data remain private to the Principal Investigator, Co-Investigators and experiment team for three years, after which they become public. Calibration data are public immediately. For full details, see the ISIS data policy.

For commercial-in-confidence experiments, all data and metadata are owned exclusively by the commercial user. Relevant STFC staff may access facility-curated data for operational purposes under strict confidentiality.

The PI is responsible for ensuring the correct experiment number (RB number) is entered in the metadata to maintain proper data access and ownership.

Each ISIS experiment is assigned a citable DOI, which should be referenced in related publications.

Guides and instructional videos on using the Data Gateway are available online. For further assistance, contact isisdata@stfc.ac.uk

Analysing data

Computing is essential to the science we support, which includes software packages and services fundamental to our overall scientific process at ISIS. These enable our community to optimise experiments, reduce, treat, interpret and visualise the results of their experiments.

Visit our scientific software pages for more information, or contact supportanalysis@stfc.ac.uk.

Data Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)

Each experiment conducted at ISIS is assigned a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which provides a permanent reference to the data collected. Citing this DOI in publications links the work back to the original data, helping demonstrate research transparency and making it easier for ISIS to identify outputs arising from beamtime.

Researchers are strongly encouraged to cite at least one data DOI in every publication resulting from ISIS experiments. DOIs follow the format 10.5286/ISIS.E.RBXXXXXXX, where XXXXXXX is the 7-digit experiment (RB) number. These can be viewed via the Data Gateway.

Citing DOIs supports open access, satisfies funder and journal requirements for data transparency, and allows publications to be linked directly to the corresponding experiment.

The recommended citation format is:

Author, A. N. et al. (Year): Title, STFC ISIS Facility, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RBXXXXXXX

Data are normally under a three-year embargo before becoming public; shorter embargoes can be requested via isisdata@stfc.ac.uk

For more information, refer to our Policy page or watch the video on ‘DOIs for Data’, produced by European facilities.

For further assistance, contact isisdata@stfc.ac.uk

Computing across ISIS

Computing is critical to the operation of ISIS and the experiments that ru​n here​. Specialist hardware and software is developed and supported for the community by various ISIS groups:

Team member