Support Service for Sharing Data

When sharing research data, you should select an appropriate data repository.

How to select a data repository

There are various types of data repositories, including disciplinary repositories, institutional repositories, and general-purpose repositories.
If the organization from which you receive a research grant or to which you submit a thesis has a data repository policy, you need to select a data repository that complies with the policy.
If your academic discipline already has a widely accepted disciplinary repository, it will be appropriate to have it as your top choice.
If there is no such disciplinary repository, you should select from data repositories while paying consideration to the following matters in general terms:

  • Long-term data preservation guarantee: Research data must be preserved for at least 10 years after the publication of academic theses based on the data.
  • Availability of a persistent identifier, such as a digital object identifier (DOI): Data with a DOI are easy to quote.
  • Types of available rights management and licensing
  • Costs: Check the amount of user fees per data set or gigabyte.
  • Place of data preservation: The applicable data protection law differs according to the physical location of the server on which data are preserved.
  • Policy on data access and use: Confirm whether the data repository has a disclosed policy.
  • Autonomy and reliability of the repository provider: Check what kind of organization provides the repository.

Data Repository Selection Decision Tree for Researchers in the Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences（Enabling FAIR DataCommunity, Ruth Duerr, Danie Kinkade, Michael Witt, & Lynn Yarmey. 2018） is a source of reference for you to select from repositories.

CoreTrustSeal

CoreTrustSeal is a system for certifying the reliability of each data repository. Having CoreTrustSeal certification is one of the key conditions for data repositories that deserve selection.

Disciplinary repositories: List of data repository search sites

  • re3data
    This website is designed for users to search for data repositories by discipline, data type, country, etc. The status of international certifications, including CoreTrustSeal, is shown by icons.
  • Data repositories (The Open AccessDirectory)
    This is a directory of disciplinary data repositories. Repositories are listed with a brief explanation.

In addition, some publishers have released lists of recommended repositories.

Institutional repository: Sharing research data in the Kyoto University Research Information Repository (KURENAI)

Kyoto University Research Information Repository (KURENAI) is Kyoto University’s institutional repository on which all members of Kyoto University can register content. The revision of the repository operational policy in June 2019 has made it possible to register research data on which various research works are based as well. If you are interested in it, please refer to the page "Depositing Research Data in KURENAI".

Notes

KURENAI has no CoreTrustSeal certification yet. Please note that this repository may not serve your purpose if the organization from which you receive a research grant or to which you submit a thesis requires you to register your research data on a certified repository.

General-purpose repository

On general-purpose repositories, you can register a wide range of data regardless of the discipline. Major examples are as follows:

The following two websites compare various repositories.

However, please note that these websites may not give the latest information.

References

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