Manage Your Research Data: Data Archives & Data Sharing
This guide provides a primer on the fundamentals of data management.
Archiving Data at Portland State University
"Archived Data" is material you have collected throughout the research process that you want to share when the project is conclude.
Most grants will call this "final research data," which PIs will share with colleagues to facilitate future research projects. Once data is archives, it cannot be changed and is static.
Live or active data, which is still being collected or manipulated throughout a project's life cycle, should not be archived. For live data storage, contact PSU's Office of Information Technology.
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Storage of live & active research dataFor storage of live/active data, please contact the Office of Information Technology.
For long-term data storage at PSU, please see Data Storage link below. -
Data Archive at PSU (PDXScholar)PDXScholar is Portland State University’s institutional repository. We provide a local archive storage option for sharing your data sets. You can use PDXScholar to showcase your data — we can create project-specific data collection, departmental data, or data as supplemental files.
Features:
No fees
No file size limit
No type/format limits
Amazon S3 backup
DOI – permanent, unique identifier
Data Repositories
Below is a sample of date repositories in which researchers can deposit their data.
Please note that grants or journals may require PIs to deposit their data into a specific repository.
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ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research)PSU is a member of ICPSR, which allows members of our community to deposit data in the ICPSR database.
Similar to OpenICPSR, which allows non-subscribers to deposit data, with two advantages: 1) there is no data cap 2) ICPSR staff assist depositors throughout the process.
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Dryad"The Dryad Digital Repository is a curated resource that makes research data discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. Dryad provides a general-purpose home for a wide diversity of data types.
Dryad originated from an initiative among a group of leading journals and scientific societies to adopt a joint data archiving policy (JDAP) for their publications, and the recognition that open, easy-to-use, not-for-profit, community-governed data infrastructure was needed to support such a policy. These remain our guiding principles.
Dryad’s vision is to promote a world where research data is openly available, integrated with the scholarly literature, and routinely re-used to create knowledge.
Our mission is to provide the infrastructure for, and promote the re-use of, data underlying the scholarly literature." -
Figshare"Figshare is a repository where users can make all of their research outputs available in a citable, shareable and discoverable manner"
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Open Access Directory: Data Repository"The Open Access Directory (OAD) is a compendium of simple factual lists about open access (OA) to science and scholarship, maintained by the OA community at large."
Covers ~50 disciplines -
OpenICPSR"A service of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), openICPSR is a self-publishing repository for social, behavioral, and health sciences research data. openICPSR is particularly well-suited for the deposit of replication data sets for researchers who need to publish their raw data associated with a journal article so that other researchers can replicate their findings."
Note: Limit of 2GB space -
re3data.org"Re3data is a global registry of research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines. It includes repositories that enable permanent storage of and access to data sets to researchers, funding bodies, publishers, and scholarly institutions. re3data.org promotes a culture of sharing, increased access and better visibility of research data. The registry has gone live in autumn 2012 and has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)."
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Repository Finder"Repository Finder, a pilot project of the Enabling FAIR Data Project led by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in partnership with DataCite and the Earth, space and environment sciences community, can help you find an appropriate repository to deposit your research data. The tool is hosted by DataCite and queries the re3data registry of research data repositories. As part of the FAIRsFAIR project, which aims to supply practical solutions for the use of the FAIR data principles throughout the research data life cycle, the Repository Finder is extended to query for repositories relevant to FAIRsFAIR Project."
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PDXScholarPDXScholar is Portland State University's institutional repository, which allows PIs to freely share their data. PDXScholar is a trusted data depository that meets federal open data sharing requirements.
Final Steps Before Sharing Data
Before sharing data, consider the following:
- Are there any legal restrictions?
- Does your funder have sharing restrictions?
- Has sensitive data or personal identifiers of subjects been redacted?
- Is the redaction in compliance with FERPA and HIPPA?
- Do you have the legal rights to share data?
Privacy Considerations:
- Anonymized data: Data in which identifying information has been removed, substituted, aggregated, or generalized.
- Identifiers: Variables that could be used to identify individuals or groups in the study.
- Direct identifiers are information can directly identifies participants. These may include:
- Name, initials, address, contact information, social security numbers, vehicle registration data, medical data, device information, IP address, photographs, recordings, family information, date of birth.
- Indirect identifiers are information that can identify an individual or group when combined with other data. These may include:
- Gender, place of birth, rare medical condition, place of treatment, zip or area code, socioeconomic data (ex. workplace, income, education institution), ethnicity, age, geographic indicators, transcript records.
- Restricted data: Data in the study that may be shared, but only under secure conditions.
- Sensitive data: Data that can be used to identify a group or individual.
Metadata and Documentation:
Before sharing the project, be sure to include appropriate metadata, which is information and documentation about the data itself. Metadata includes codebooks, read me files, and supporting documentation. See guide for full discussion of metadata and documentation.
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ICPSR Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving (5th ed.)For additional information, see ICPSR's guide, specification "Phase 5: Preparing Data for Sharing," pp. 36-39.