# Publishing data on the web

Publishing open data can be as simple as uploading a file to a commonly used publication platform, such as [Microsoft OneDrive](https://www.microsoft.com/en/microsoft-365/onedrive/online-cloud-storage), and then sharing the link with people. If you want to make open data available online in a minimum viable way and this meets the needs of your users, we recommend using [Github ](https://github.com/)– a popular code and data hosting site where you remain in control. If you are new to Github, register for an account at [github.com](https://github.com/) and then head to [octopub.io](https://octopub.io/) which is a tool created by the ODI that makes it easy to publish data on GitHub. Log in to octopub using your Github account and follow the [step-by-step guide](https://octopub.io/getting-started) to publishing a dataset.

You may instead want to publish data an existing open data platform. Many organisations, including most governments, have their own data platforms. There are also a number of community platforms such as [data.world](https://data.world/), [AWS public datasets](https://aws.amazon.com/opendata/) and [OpenStreetMap](https://www.openstreetmap.org/) that allow for user contributions. These platforms often have specific restrictions on the type or format of data you need to provide, but offer additional functionality for reusers.

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For further guidance on where to publish data, check out our [‘data publishing platforms’ resource list](https://github.com/theodi/data-publish-list#data-publishing-platforms)
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If you are new to publishing data and don’t have an existing publication method, check out our guide to [‘Publishing open data in times of crisis’](https://www.theodi.org/article/publishing-open-data-in-times-of-crisis/). Originally published to help others publish data that could be useful in addressing the Covid-19 pandemic in a quick and efficient manner, this checklist is also useful to data publishers that want to publish data openly, but don’t have a lot of capacity to do so.
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