Research Data Management: Data Repositories

The Dryad Digital Repository is an open and curated data sharing platform for researchers to share and publish their data. The UC’s California Digital Library and Dryad co-develop this resource. Dryad is free for UCI affiliates. Each dataset goes through a curation process during submission to check for FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability).

Key features of Dryad include:

• Publish dataset an independent dataset or as part of a journal submission
• Link data with related articles, code, and other datasets
• Permanent data citations with a DataCite DOI for attribution
• Preservation in Core Trust Seal certified Merritt repository
• Standardized views, downloads, and citation metrics in accordance with Make Data Count

Sharing your data in Dryad:

• Research data from any discipline is accepted
• Datasets must be complete (no in-progress data) and in a re-usable form
• 300 GB max per data publication
• All data published under CC0 license 

Google Dataset Search enables users to find datasets stored across thousands of repositories on the Web, making these datasets universally accessible and useful.

Search for discipline-specific data repositories:

• PLOS journal recommended data repositories

• Scientific Data recommended repositories - Nature Publishing Group

• NIH list of repositories for sharing scientific data

• FAIRSharing, a curated, informative and educational resource on data and metadata standards, inter-related to databases and data policies

• OAD (Open Access Directory) Data Repositories, a compendium of simple factual lists about open access (OA) to science and scholarship, maintained by the OA community at large

• re3data - Registry of Research Data Repositories, a global registry of research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines

The following repositories accept data from any discipline:

• Dryad Digital Repository
  • (See box to left). A curated resource that makes research data discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. Dryad provides a general-purpose home for a wide diversity of data types. Dryad is co-developed with University of California, and free to use for UC researchers.
• Zenodo
  • "An open repository for all scholarship, enabling researchers from all disciplines to share and preserve their research outputs, regardless of size or format. Free to upload and free to access, Zenodo makes scientific outputs of all kinds citable, shareable and discoverable for the long term"
• FigShare
  • "A repository where users can make all of their research outputs available in a citable, shareable and discoverable manner. figshare features aim to help you organize your research and get as much impact for it as possible, without adding time or effort to your day."
• Harvard Dataverse
  • “Harvard Dataverse is a free data repository open to all researchers from any discipline, both inside and outside of the Harvard community, where you can share, archive, cite, access, and explore research data. You can open your data to the general public, or restrict access and define customizable terms of use.”
• Open Science Framework (OSF)
  • "OSF is a free and open source project management tool that supports researchers throughout their entire project lifecycle. As a collaboration tool, OSF helps research teams work on projects privately or make the entire project publicly accessible for broad dissemination. As a workflow system, OSF enables connections to the many products researchers already use, streamlining their process and increasing efficiency."
• Mendeley Data
  • "Mendeley Data is an open research data repository, where researchers can upload and share their research data. Datasets can be shared privately amongst individuals, as well as published to share with the world. Search 26+ million datasets from domain-specific and cross-domain repositories."