Choosing a data repository
Answer
When choosing a data repository, it’s important to consider any funder requirements, community norms or standards, the type of data you need to share, as well as the format and volume of your data.
You might also want to explore the repository’s security measures, such as access control, or functionality, such as the provision of persistent identifiers for your data (eg. DOIs), version control, metadata management, and search capabilities.
Funder repositories
Some funders expect data to be deposited in specific data centres, and you should offer your data to those first.
For example:
-
ESRC: UK Data Service
-
-
British Oceanographic Data Centre
-
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis
-
Environmental Information Data Centre
-
National Geoscience Data Centre
-
UK Polar Data Centre
-
The Archaeology Data Service is supported by the AHRC and NERC for data within the scope of their collection policies.
The Wellcome Trust expects data to be deposited in recognised data repositories for particular data types where they exist. Wellcome Open Research maintains a list of approved repositories suitable for Wellcome-funded research.
You should also consider whether any agreements with your collaborators include requirements for data deposit.
Discipline or subject repositories
If there are no funder expectations for data deposit, you may consider if a discipline-specific data repository would suit your needs for data sharing. A community or discipline-specific repository will potentially provide useful fields for your metadata [link to Metadata KB] specific to your subject, which helps make your data more FAIR.
You can search for data repositories by discipline using the registry of research data repositories Re3data.org.
Institutional repository
If there isn’t a suitable discipline-specific or other external data repository, you can deposit your data in an institutional data repository. At The University of Manchester we use Figshare for Institutions as our supported data repository. Figshare is suitable for the deposit of data which can be made openly and publicly available for reuse.
Find out more about how to use Figshare.
General-purpose repositories
You can also use general-purpose data repositories, such as Zenodo. These services are free and user-friendly but may not offer the same level of quality control as a specialist or institutional data repository.