Library Guides: Research Data Management (RDM): Data Repositories

What is a data repository?

A data repository is searchable catalog of data sets. Researchers can describe their data and make the data sets available in open repositories - often repositories are hosted at research institutions. This practice makes the data available for future research and preserves the effort and money that went into collecting the data. Expectations around open data deposit are increasing.

Are you depositing data? BEST BET

Recommended repository for large data sets:

FRDR - Federated Research Data Repository
This is a national repository in limited production. It is a scalable federated platform for digital research data management (RDM) and discovery. File size must be under 4TB. Deposit is free and includes a DOI for the record.

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) has a Youtube channel with video tutorials on FRDR.

Recommended multidisciplinary repositories

Figshare
Researchers can upload files of any format up to 5GB and manage access to the files. DOIs are created when datasets are published
Mendeley Data
Upload files of any type and Mendeley Data will host your research data for you. This is a free service owned by Elsevier.

Repositories that allow restricted data sets:

You may want to select one of the repositories below if you want to restrict your data. This means that you have deposited your data in an appropriate repository but you want to restrict access. This may be the case if your data is sensitive or if there is intellectual property that you want to protect for a given amount of time.

Harvard Dataverse
Allows individual researchers to add a dataset and make the data "restricted access". Data is assigned a DOI and the metadata is discoverable.
Open Science Framework (OSF)
OSF is both a project management platform as well as a repository. You can select to store your data on a Canadian cloud server and you can set the permissions on your data to "restricted access."

Discipline specific repositories

re3data.org
This resource lists information on more than 2,000 research data repositories including a browsable subject list.
Data Repositories - Open Access Directory
Lists open data repositories according to discipline.

Research Data Management (RDM)

FAIR data principles