Publishing data on the web

Publishing data doesn't have to be hard

Publishing open data can be as simple as uploading a file to a commonly used publication platform, such as Microsoft OneDrive, 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 – 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 and then head to 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 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, AWS public datasets and OpenStreetMap 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.

For further guidance on where to publish data, check out our ‘data publishing platforms’ resource list

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’. 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.