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Data Repositories for Research Data

This guide serves as a resource for faculty, students, staff, and other researchers who are looking for relevant data repositories to deposit or reuse data.

Data Repositories and Open Data Guidance

This guide serves as a resource for faculty, students, staff, and other researchers who are looking for relevant data repositories to deposit or reuse research data. Users can also find guidance on recent trends and policy changes that have led to a more open data focused research environment.

NOTE: The sections of this guide are not exhaustive lists or meant to preclude the use of any data repository not mentioned.

Trends in Open Research Data

In recent years there has been major movement toward a more open research data environment on the national level. Major federal funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have implemented policies that require federally funded research data be made publicly accessible at the time of associated publications. The most sweeping of these policies came in 2022 when the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a memorandum requiring all publications and supporting research data resulting from federal funding must be made publicly accessible at the time of publication. More about these policies can be found here.

 

Benefits of Open Data

  • Contributes to validity of research by increasing a project's transparency and reproducibility
  • Increases the potential reuse of research data and the overall impact of research
  • Facilitates the sharing of data across disciplines and potential collaboration

 

FAIR Data Principles

The FAIR Data Principles are a set of guidelines that have become a standard across the open data landscape. The purpose of the principles focuses on the idea of expanding the abilities of both humans and machines to find, understand, and use data.

  • Findable - Data and supplementary material are described with sufficiently rich metadata and a unique persistent identifier (Ex. DOI)
  • Accessible - (Meta)data are understandable to humans and machines. Data is deposited in a trusted repository
  • Interoperable - (Meta)data use a formal, accessible, shared, and broadly applicable language for knowledge representation
  • Reusable - (Meta)data and collections have a clear usage license and provide accurate information on provenance