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Research Data Management

Background and links to more information about data management issues.

Publishing and Sharing Data

Research Data Repositories are for the long-term archiving and preservation of research data.

Designed to manage, share, access, and archive researchers' datasets, they allow for the review, validation, and reuse of the results of research. Data repositories may cater to a specific discipline, a region, a type of data, specific formats, or accept many different types of data. There is no one-size-fits-all for research data repositories. Researchers are encouraged to review their funder and publisher requirements.

The re3data catalog is a global catalog of data repositories, and is helpful in identifying ones for your data. 

Contact researchdatahelp@groups.dartmouth.edu or your subject librarian for help determining a repository for your research data.

Featured Data Repositories

Dartmouth Dataverse

Dataverse is Dartmouth’s institutional repository for depositing and sharing your research data.  Dartmouth affiliated students, researchers, faculty, and staff are welcome to deposit research data, supplementary tables and documentation, publications associated with data, presentations, etc. into Dataverse.

Dataverse support supports a variety of research data types and formats, and provides DOIs for your published datasets.  A Dataverse collection is a customizable container for organizing and showcasing datasets. The Dataverse collection can be for an individual researcher, research group, an entire department, a journal, etc.

Dataverse supports the uploading of any file type (3GB max), including shapefiles, images, Flexible Image Transport System files, and compressed files. Tabular data files (500MB max) (e.g. Stata, SPSS, R data, Excel (xlsx) and CSV) are ingested with built-in viewers.

The Dataverse User Guide provides more information on account, collection, and dataset management.

To get started with Dataverse, contact researchdatahelp@groups.dartmouth.edu or your subject librarian.

IEEE Dataport

Dartmouth has an institutional subscription to IEEE's dataset storage and search platform, DataPort.

Our institutional subscription allows for unlimited access to published datasets, free standard upload of datasets, and open access upload of datasets (20TB per year). 

Please contact researchdatahelp@groups.dartmouth.edu or your subject librarian if you are interested in publishing a dataset in IEEE Dataport.

Note:  Individual accounts (with a Dartmouth email address) are required to download and submit data.

Selecting a Data Repository

Dartmouth Library recommends that you deposit your data in a discipline-specific repository for maximum impact and discoverability in your field. Often, funders and publishers have specific repositories they recommend to meet their requirements.  Always check with your funder or publisher for specific guidance before choosing a repository.

re3data is the Registry of Research Data Repositories. It lists over 2900 repositories. You can search or browse by subject, content type, or country. Each repository description includes information about types of content, access policies, subjects, certificates & standards, the URL, who manages it, and keywords. re3data uses icons to indicate repository attributes to aid in searching for the best fit for you and your data.

If your discipline does not have a suggested repository, consider depositing it in a general or institutional data repository.

Recommended general repositories:

Please note that some repositories have free and paid levels of service.

Please contact researchdatahelp@groups.dartmouth.edu for assistance selecting the right repository for your research data.

Data Citation Formatting

Recommended formats for data citation:

      Basic data citation
      Creator (PublicationYear). Title. Publisher. Identifier

      Data citation with resource type and identifier
      Creator (PublicationYear). Title. Version. Publisher. ResourceType. Identifier

Licensing Your Data

Open data commons provides three licenses that you can apply to your data.

    Public domain dedication and license (PDDL) — “Public Domain for data/databases”
    Attribution license (ODC-By) — “Attribution for data/databases”
    Open database license (ODC-ODbL) — “Attribution Share-Alike for data/databases”