Data publication: Step 2 - Find a suitable place to publish

There are a number of things you should consider when finding a suitable repository for your data.

Is the repository reputable?

• Can it be found on sites like re3data or FAIRSharing?
• Does your journal, publisher or research area endorse it?
• Does it have a certification, such as the Data Seal of Approval?

Will the repository take the data you want to deposit?

• Check to see what the repository accepts under their deposit policy
• Discipline specific repositories have stricter requirements on what can be accepted as opposed to more general repositories 

Does the repository charge for uploading data or other services?

• Some repositories may accept data up to a certain file size for free and charge for larger files whilst others may charge upfront
• Ensure you have factored in such costs  to your research budget 

Does the repository provide restricted or mediated access (if needed)?

Publishing your data doesn’t necessarily mean that your data must be available to anyone and everyone. If there are concerns that releasing your data openly could cause harm to someone or something, or have other negative consequences, then you should choose to apply specific restrictions on how people can gain access to your data.

Does the repository provide a Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) or some way of tracking analysis or usage?

DOIs for research datasets are normally created via the data repository holding your research data. 

DOIs should be applied to your data when it’s:

• in a finalised form - no further changes will be made
• being made available via open or mediated access
• going to be cited in a publication or as an output in its own right

The Sydney University Library generates and maintains DOIs for items submitted to the Sydney eScholarship repository.

Does the repository provide long term preservation of your dataset?

Adapted from "Where to keep research data", Digital Curation Center. Retrieved from: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides-checklists/where-keep-research-data/where-keep-research-data

Tools to help choosing data repositories

1. re3data - a global registry of research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines

2. FAIRsharing - a curated database of research data repositories, standards and policies focusing on Life and Biomedical Sciences

3. OpenDOAR - the Directory of Open Access Repositories

The Sydney eScholarship repository is the University's institutional repository. You should consider using the repository to archive your research datasets and other research outputs, if they are less than 2GB and can be made openly available.

Datasets published in Sydney eScholarship are added to Research Data Australia, increasing exposure to your research data.

Take a look at our User Guidelines page on how to submit your dataset to the repository or contact ses.admin@sydney.edu.au for assistance. 

Well-known general purpose repositories

• Zenodo – a multidisciplinary repository that enables scientists to share and showcase research results (data and publications) that are not part of the existing institutional or subject-based repositories of the research communities, offering a variety of different licenses and access levels, integration with GitHub with storage up to 50 GB per dataset;

• Dryad – a general-purpose repository that enables the data underlying scientific publications discoverable, freely reusable and citable;

• Open Science Framework (OSF) - a scholarly commons to connect the entire research cycle. It is part network of research materials, part version control system, and part collaboration software;

• Figshare – a multidisciplinary repository that allows researchers to publish all of their research outputs in a citable, sharable and discoverable manner.

Domain/Discipline specific repositories

• Life Sciences (including Medical and Health Sciences)

  • National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)- advanced biomedical and genomic information

  • Protein Data Bank (PDB)-  3D structures of proteins, nucleic acids, and complex assemblies

  • Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR)- datasets relevant to population studies

  • Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx)- a catalogue of surveys, censuses, vital statistics, and other health-related data

  • OpenfMRI-  raw magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) datasets

  • European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI)-  biological data

  • MEDMI- health and environmental data

• Ecological and Environmental Sciences

  • The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) runs seven centres for environment-related data and also supports the Archaeology Data Service for science based archaeology data

  • Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB)- international repository for ecological and environmental research

  • Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE) – Earth observational data and metadata 

  • MEDMI-  health and environmental data

• Social and Political Sciences 

  • Australian Data Archive - a national service for the collection and preservation of digital research data 

  • UK Data Archive- the largest collection of social and economic datasets in the UK 

  • CESSDA ERIC - social science data archives across Europe

  • Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)-  social and behavioural sciences

Wellcome Trust- Data Guidelines

Nature.com - Recommended data repositories categorised by subject area

Public Library of Science (PLOS) - Recommended Repositories

For further assistance in publishing your research data, email us!