Selecting a data repository

A data repository is a place to archive and make publicly available research datasets. To select an appropriate repository take the following steps

Step	Note
1. Are you required to deposit in a certain repository?	Some funders and journals require or recommend datasets be deposited in their repositories. Check the specific requirements or contact us for assistance in making this determination
2. Is there a discipline-specific repository?	If you have a choice of where to deposit, look for commonly used repositories in your discipline. Some repositories are geared towards groups of disciplines while others are specific to a specific kind of research.
3. If there is no discipline-specific repository, select a general repository	There are several general-purpose repositories that can fulfill funder and journal sharing requirements. The choice often comes down to personal preferences.

For a one-stop shop that addresses all funder, journal, and University data archiving and sharing requirements, consider ReDATA, the University of Arizona's Research Data Repository.

For archiving open access manuscripts, theses/dissertations, monographs, etc., please visit the Campus Repository. Contact Kimberly Chapman, Director.

Desirable characteristics of data repositories

The Desirable Characteristics of Data Repositories for Federally Funded Research, developed by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) are used by many federal funders in their guidance to researchers for selecting a data repository. The NSTC is part of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Data repositories used to comply with federal data sharing requirements should demonstrate these characteristics whenever possible.

Characteristic	Description	ReDATA
Unique Persistent Identifiers	Assigns datasets a citable, unique persistent identifier, such as a digital object identifier (DOI) or accession number, to support data discovery, reporting, and research assessment. The identifier points to a persistent landing page that remains accessible even if the dataset is de-accessioned or no longer available	Yes
Long-Term Sustainability	Has a plan for long-term management of data, including maintaining integrity, authenticity, and availability of datasets; building on a stable technical infrastructure and funding plans; and having contingency plans to ensure data are available and maintained during and after unforeseen events.	Yes
Metadata	Ensures datasets are accompanied by metadata to enable discovery, reuse, and citation of datasets, using schema that are appropriate to, and ideally widely used across, the community(ies) the repository serves.	Yes
Curation and Quality Assurance	Provides, or has a mechanism for others to provide, expert curation and quality assurance to improve the accuracy and integrity of datasets and metadata.	Yes
Free and Easy Access	Provides broad, equitable, and maximally open access to datasets and their metadata free of charge in a timely manner after submission, consistent with legal and ethical limits required to maintain privacy and confidentiality, Tribal sovereignty, and protection of other sensitive data.	Yes
Broad and Measured Reuse	Makes datasets and their metadata available with broadest possible terms of reuse; and provides the ability to measure attribution, citation, and reuse of data	Yes
Clear Use Guidance	Provides accompanying documentation describing terms of dataset access and use.	Yes
Security and Integrity	Has documented measures in place to meet generally accepted criteria for preventing unauthorized access to, modification of, or release of data, with levels of security that are appropriate to the sensitivity of data.	Yes¹
Confidentiality	Has documented capabilities for ensuring that administrative, technical, and physical safeguards are employed to comply with applicable confidentiality, risk management, and continuous monitoring requirements for sensitive data.	Yes¹
Common Format	Allows datasets and metadata downloaded, accessed, or exported from the repository to be in widely used, preferably non-proprietary, formats consistent with those used in the community(ies) the repository serves.	Yes
Provenance	Has mechanisms in place to record the origin, chain of custody, and any modifications to submitted datasets and metadata.	Yes²
Retention Policy	Provides documentation on policies for data retention within the repository.	Yes
Fidelity to Consent	Uses documented procedures to restrict dataset access and use to those that are consistent with participant consent and changes in consent.	Yes³
Restricted Use Compliant	Uses documented procedures to communicate and enforce data use restrictions, such as preventing reidentification or redistribution to unauthorized users.	Yes³
Privacy	Implements and provides documentation of measures (for example, tiered access, credentialing of data users, security safeguards against potential breaches) to protect human subjects’ data from inappropriate access.	No⁴
Plan for Breach	Has security measures that include a response plan for detected data breaches.	Yes
Download Control	Controls and audits access to and download of datasets (if download is permitted).	No⁴
Violations	Has procedures for addressing violations of terms-of-use by users and data mismanagement by the repository.	Yes
Request Review	Makes use of an established and transparent process for reviewing data access requests.	No⁴

¹Technical and administrative measures (e.g., NetIDs login, curatorial review prior to publication) help ensure data is not modified without authorization. Furthermore, administrative mechanisms help ensure sensitive data is not made public and, where applicable, that requirements for ethical data sharing are met.

²ReDATA supports dataset versioning to retain a prior record of dataset modifications. Records of modifications from the curation process are retained internally.

³ ReDATA supports de-identified human data but requires documented consent for sharing. ReDATA's terms of use forbid users from attempting to reidentify participants.

⁴ ReDATA is intended for materials that are publicly releasable with unrestricted availability. It does not allow for restricting data downloads, apart from temporary embargoes.

Tools for finding repositories

Data indexers

NAME	DESCRIPTION
Re3Data	Registry of Research Data Repositories. A worldwide index of data repositories.
Fairsharing	A database of data repositories and related metadata standards and policies. Also useful for identifying metadata standards for writing a DMP.
Google Dataset Search	Search for data across many data repositories and government websites
DataCite Commons	Search across all public data repositories that use DataCite DOIs

Other resources

Awesome Datasets is a collection of community contributed datasets
Scientific Data's Recommended Data Repositories is a list of recommended data repositories by Nature's Scientific Data journal. All manuscripts submitted to Scientific Data must be deposited in an approved data repository.
NIH Data Sharing Repositories is a table listing NIH-supported data repositories that accept submissions of appropriate data. Includes the Institute or Center, Repository Name, Description, Submission Policy, and How to Access the Data.
American Heart Association Data Repositories (AHA) is a list of approved data repositories in support of the recently released AHA Open Science Policy. Subject-focused repositories, when available, are preferred over general repositories.
Data Repositories (Open Access Directory)

Example data repositories

This is a list is a sample of some popular repositories in various fields. It is not intended to be comprehensive

Repository	Discipline	Submission Fees	Notes
ReDATA	All	No cost	Includes data curation service for improved discoverability and reuse. Managed by the U of A Libraries.
ICPSR	Political & Social Sciences	No cost to deposit, fees apply for downloads unless institution is a member	U of A is a member institution. Accepts sensitive data.
Qualitative Data Repository	Social sciences	Fees apply (depends on size and complexity)	Provide tools & workflows focusing on qualitative data.
Dryad	Life sciences, medicine	Fees apply (depends on size)	Primarily accepts data associated with peer-reviewed publications. Only CC0 license allowed.
GenBank	Life sciences	No cost	NIH genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences. Widely used.
Neurovault	Neurosciences	No cost	Specializes in images of the brain.
Vivli	Medicine	Fees apply	Specializes in clinical data sharing. Accepts sensitive data and provides access controls.
PANGEA	Earth & environmental sciences	No cost	Recommended by various international scientific journals
DataONE	Earth scineces	N/A	Well-known and trusted community providing access to earth science data from network members.
GBIF	Ecology & biodiversity	N/A	GBIF is a network that indexes and publishes data from partner "publishers" of which there are over 2000. U of A's Herbarium, Insect Collection, and Museum of Natural History are local partners
Harvard Dataverse	All	No cost	Open to researchers outside of Harvard. Accepts all disciplines but is primarily used for social sciences.
Zenodo	All	No cost	Widely used, operated by CERN.
Figshare	All	No cost	Commercial provider used by ReDATA. The public Figshare.com repository has lower deposit limits and provides no curation, deposit assistance, or continued stewardship of submissions.