C5: Publication and dissemination

Publication and dissemination always depend on your goals, aims and the type of data. The best way is to offer a mixture of data tables, graphs, and complementary text.

The  decision whether to publish on paper or online depends on the rhythm of publication and also on whether you are publishing long- or short-lasting data.

Annual data like production and annual market data can easily be published and sold in a book. However, for regularly published and often changing price data, it is better to publish online or in an e-mail newsletter.

There are countries that publish their books or e-books with annual data in February or March and others who only publish in autumn of the following year. It depends on the time and financial resources of the publishing organisation. Every institution has to find the time that best fits its needs. Scientific analysis is often carried out for a couple of years and is only published long after the actual data have been collected.

Availability mainly depends on the financing and funding of the data collection. In some countries like France, Spain, Denmark, or the Czech Republic, organic data collection is entirely publicly financed, and all data is freely available on the internet or for a small price to finance the printing of the book. In other countries, like Germany or the United Kingdom, part or all of the data collection is privately organised. There, money has to be earned with data collection, which means that a part of the data is sold. Price data and household panel data are only freely available to a limited extent. Also, for some data collection, it can be useful to offer an analysis of data in exchange in order to motivate their data provision. Sometimes, part of the data is only for internal user groups, and another part is available to the public.