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Data Management Best Practices: Sharing

This page is about publishing your data. More information about collaboration tools will come soon!

There are different ways to share your data and some are more effective than others. We recommend that no matter where you deposit your data, you maintain 2 other copies per the 3-2-1 Rule.

Here is a break down of the pros and cons of some of the more common ways you might share your data:

Method Pros Cons
Share upon request
  • You have total control over who looks at your data
  • You have to keep track of the data
  • You have to check your email and respond to requests
  • Hard for you data to be cited consistantly
  • You may leave your institution and be un-findable for anyone hoping to work with your data
Link to data on personal/lab website
  • It can be listed with your other works in one location
  • Data can be cited with some consistency 
  • You're in charge of making sure links continue to work
  • If you leave the university/lab, you might lose access and/or the site might disappear
  • If the university/institution changes servers links may not be updated
Journal publisher website (supplemental material)
  • Data is connected to the publication it supports
  • Data can be cited
  • Citations can be tracked
  • Publisher may charge for others to access data
  • You may lose control of your data
  • Publisher may decide to discontinue hosting data
Commercial repository
  • Discoverable
  • Data can be cited
  • Citation can likely be tracked, depending on service
  • Use is probably measured
  • Company may change its terms of service
  • Company may go out of business and stop hosting data
  • May cost money to deposit
  • May or may not provide long term preservation
Discipline repository
  • Discoverable for people in your field
  • Data can be cited
  • Citations can likely be tracked, depending on service
  • Use probably measured
  • May go under and stop hosting data
  • May cost money to deposit
  • May or may not provide long term preservation
Governmental repository
  • Discoverable
  • Will likely continue to be supported
  • Data can be cited
  • Citations can likely be tracked
  • Repositories do not yet exist for all types of data
  • May or may not be prepared for long term preservation
Institutional repository
  • Will likely continue to be supported
  • Data can be cited
  • Use can be measured
  • Less discoverable than discipline repositories
  • Penn's Scholarly Commons may not be able to take your data at this time

Resources on Copyright and Licensing

Repositories

There are many repositories where you could submit your data. One way to find an appropriate repository is to search the Registry of Research Data Repositories (Re3Data). This site is not very user friendly, so please ask us if you'd like someone to go through the list with you. You may also want to check out the Wellcome Trust's suggested data hosting sites. Keep in mind this UK-based guidance and not all of it may apply.

See also DataVerse's brilliant Comparative Review of Various Data Repositories

Here is a list of some of the more common repositories as well:

General Repositories

Repositories for STEM-disciplines 

Repositories for Social Sciences

 

ScholarlyCommons is the institutional repository for the University of Pennsylvania.  As such, it houses the scholastic output of the Penn community and shares these works with a global audience. For more information, see the ScholarlyCommons Guide or email repository@pobox.upenn.edu.

Find boilerplate text that can be used to describe ScholarlyCommons in your data management plan at http://guides.library.upenn.edu/dmp/datarepos

Subjects: Data & GIS