Research Guides: Research Data Management: Data Repositories

Data Repositories

A data repository is simply a place to store datasets for the long-term. Using a repository or archive to store your data (versus simply hosting it on your website) facilitates its discovery and preservation, ensuring that it will be found by others looking for data and that care will be taken to preserve the data over time.

There are thousands of data repositories, often for a specific subject or type of data, and many organized by universities or scholarly organizations.

Released in May 2022 by OSTP, the report Desirable Characteristics of Data Repositories for Federally Funded Research aims to improve consistency across Federal departments and agencies in the instructions they provide to researchers about selecting repositories for data resulting from Federally funded research. This document contains clearly defined desirable characteristics for two classes of online research data repositories: a general class appropriate for all types of Federally funded data—including free and easy access—and a specific class that has special considerations for the sharing of human data, including additional data security and privacy considerations.

For subject data repositories, please also visit your discipline's research guide or contact your subject librarian directly. Note that some subjects may not have discipline specific repositories.

See the Open Data tab for other repositories

DataCite Commons
Web portal for users to search for works, people, organizations or repositories based on the DataCite metadata catalog
figshare
figshare helps academic institutions store, share and manage all of their research outputs. Upload files up to 5GB. We accept any file format and aim to preview all of them in the browser.
ICPSR Data Portal
An international consortium of more than 750 academic institutions and research organizations, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community. ICPSR maintains a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. It hosts 21 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.
re3data.org
re3data.org is a global registry of research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines.
Simmons Data Repositories Listing
A listing of various subject oriented data repositories, part of the Open Access Directory.

Open Data is part of the broader Open Access movement, promoting the idea that research, especially publicly funded research, should be made widely available. This allows for more and more rapid development and dissemination of knowledge.

Open Data is data that is permanently and freely available for the world to use, allowing for maximum exposure and benefit from current research.

Open Access Directory
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.
Open Data Commons
Provides a set of legal tools and licenses to help you publish, provide and use open data
Harvard Dataverse Repository
A free data repository open to all researchers from any discipline, both inside and outside of the Harvard community, where you can share, archive, cite, access, and explore research data.
Dryad Digital Repository
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.