Open Access and Scholarly Communication
Publishing & Sharing Research Data
CSU has a membership with the generalist data repository Dryad. See our webpage about Dryad to find out if Dryad is the right place to deposit your data.
Publishing and sharing research data is a great way of incorporating open access and FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) principles into your research practices. By sharing your data, other researchers can validate and build upon your research, creating a collaborative culture that is more inclusive, reproducible, and improves public trust in science. Data sharing is also required by many journals as part of the article publishing process.
In addition, many funding agencies and institutions, such as the NIH, have also encouraged or updated their policies to require some level of open data sharing. SPARC has a tool to browse data and article sharing policies by funding agencies, so researchers can gain a better understanding of specific data sharing requirements they may have to navigate.
Effective data sharing requires good planning and data management practices throughout the research data lifecycle. For more information about creating a data management plan (DMP), see CSU Libraries' webpage about DMPs.
Choosing a Data Repository
There are three major types of data repositories where you can deposit your data for sharing. Many disciplines have preferred discipline-specific repositories. If your discipline does not have a preferred repository, there are also general repositories that take data from all fields. The third option is to deposit your data into an institutional repository. At CSU, we offer self-archiving for journal articles in Mountain Scholar, and research data can be shared through our institutional membership with Dryad.
Below you will find links to resources to help you find the right repository for your data.
Data Repositories by Category
Discipline-specific Repositories
- Registry of Research Data Repositories by Subject
A search tool for identifying repositories by subject. - FAIRsharing.org Registry of Databases
A search tool for identifying data repositories, as well as data-related standards and policies. - Commons Open Repository Exchange
Commons Open Repository Exchange (CORE) is an Open Access repository for the humanities. - NIH-supported Domain-Specific Repositories
Interactive list of repositories focused on a specific discipline or data type. - Nature's Recommended Data Repositories
Nature shares a list of recommended repositories for a variety of scientific disciplines. -
ICSPR
Social science data repository that offers both public-use and restricted-use data deposit. CSU is an institutional member.
Generalist Repositories
- Dryad
CSU's Dryad institutional membership makes publishing data in Dryad free for all CSU-affiliated researchers. Each dataset is assigned to a professional curator who will ensure the appropriateness and quality of the data and associated documentation. - Figshare
Freely available open data publishing platform with paid options for large datasets up to 10 TB. - Harvard Dataverse
An open repository maintained by Harvard and based on open-source software. - Mendeley Data
Data repository owned by the Elsevier academic publishing company. - Open Science Framework
Free, open-source project management tool that supports open science practices throughout the research lifecycle. - Vivli
A fee-based, restricted-access data sharing platform for individual participant-level data from clinical trials. - Zenodo
- A general-purpose open repository operated by CERN. Also good choice for publishing research software, with a number of software licensing options and an integration with GitHub.
- Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI)
- Generalist Repository Comparison Chart
Additional Open Data Resources
- Browse Data Sharing Requirements by Federal AgencyCommunity resource for tracking, comparing, and understanding both current and future U.S. federal funder research data sharing policies
- List of Research Funder Data Sharing PoliciesPrivate and public researcher funders that have data sharing polices in place or are in the process of developing a data sharing policy
Select data-sharing requirements from key journals and publishers
- Science Journalssee the "Data and Materials Availability after Publication" section
- NatureReporting standards and availability of data, materials, code and protocols
- PLOS journalsData availability policy
- Taylor & Francis journalsData sharing policies
- Wiley journalsData sharing policies
- American Geophysical UnionPublications data policy
- Nature's Recommended Data RepositoriesNature shares a list of recommended repositories for a variety of scientific disciplines.
- CSU Policy: Research DataCSU's Research Data policy is supportive of data sharing and sets expectations for responsible for data management and curation.
Attribution
This Open Data guide is inspired by content from the University of Washington Libraries' Publishing and Sharing Research Data guide.