Research Guides: Research Data Management Guide: Repositories to Find or Host Data

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Subjects: OER: Open (or Free) Educational Materials, Scholarly Communication

Repositories to Find or Host Data

Repositories can be used to find existing data which can be analyzed or combined with other data.

Additionally, if you need or want to share your data openly, you will need to identify a repository to host that data.

Data repositories can vary widely:

Multidisciplinary versus specialized
Free versus fees
Supported data types
Policies regarding who may post/share data
Provision of DOIs or other persistent identifiers

Investigate the options carefully to determine what will be the best fit for your data.

Choosing a Repository for Federally Funded Data

Desirable Characteristics of Repositories for Managing and Sharing Data Resulting from Federally Funded or Supported Research
This report from the National Science and Technology Council identifies characteristics relevant to all repositories that manage and share data resulting from Federally funded research. The characteristics are organized across three themes: Organizational Infrastructure, Digital Object Management, and Technology.

Verify: What Can I Do With This Data?

Data Sharing Wizard
Use this interactive tool to verify what you can do with someone else's data you find, what you can do with your own data, and what others can do with your data if you share it.

Find Specialized Data Repositories

re3data: Registry of Research Data Repositories
Recommended Data Repositories List from the Journal Scientific Data
Includes some generalist and some subject-specific repositories. (Scientific Data, Springer Nature)
Qualitative Data Repository
For researchers hoping to find or host qualitative rather than quantitative data, this specialized repository from Syracuse provides a robust solution.

Multidisciplinary Data Repositories

Generalist Repository Comparison Chart
Compare popular options to choose the best one for your circumstances. (Research Data Alliance)

ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research)
Supports free deposits of digital data, worldwide dissemination, long-term preservation, and other benefits. Provides persistent identifiers.
Harvard Dataverse
Open (free) to all researchers worldwide in all disciplines. Provides DOIs. Click Sign Up to create an account, then choose Add Data.
Open Science Framework (OSF)
Serves as a scholarly commons for documentation, files, collaboration, and connecting to services for research outputs.
Mendeley Data
Data storage and sharing service. Free for individual researchers. Provides DOIs.
GitHub
Although GitHub is best known as a place to host programming code, it can also be used to openly host data (free up to 500 MB per hub).
figshare
Unlimited free public space and 20 GB of free private space. Any file formats, up to 5 GB per file. Provides DOIs.
Dryad Digital Repository
Curated resource that makes research data discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. Provides a general-purpose home for diversity of data types. Provides DOIs. Data publication costs $120 (more for exceptionally large files), but some journals sponsor this fee.
Open Data on Amazon Web Services