Discover our Data in Publications guide!

Nowadays, data has become a central component of any kind of government publication, be it a report, a study or a policy summary. Nonetheless, data is often not presented and published in a way that allows others to easily access, reuse and reference it.

This is where the new data.europa.eu online guide ‘Data in Publications’ steps in to fill the gap. Formatted as an extendable checklist, it compiles practical tips, examples, visual aids and resources from across the EU that will help you make the data in your publications more accessible and reusable.

This guide is relevant for any type of published content that contains or reference data and can be used at the very beginning of your publishing process. It covers all data-related aspects of your publication:

• Structuring your application: tips on how to structure data, visualisations and text in a way that makes your publication pleasant to read and allows others to reuse them.
• Writing about data: writing techniques to make your publication more reader-friendly, including examples and video lectures on writing and editing for data.
• Creating data visualisations: learning how to create understandable, accessible and appealing data visualisations to present your data, from choosing the right type of visualisation to the design phase.
• Preparing visualisations for publishing: advice on how to prepare visualisations so that they can be found and reused by others, for example in studies, presentation slides or shared on social media.
• Preparing for data publishing: recommendations to guide you through open data practices that help transform raw data into curated, high-quality and publication-ready datasets.
• Publishing the data and the data visualisations with your publication: tips to publish your data and visualisations as individual components so that they are easy to locate and access for further reuse, which makes your work more impactful. For example, options to share your visualisation online are outlined.

Are you involved in the process of producing and publishing data and other information? Take a look at the ‘Data in Publications’ online guide to help you produce and publish accessible and reusable data, data visualisations and publications that contain data.

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