Metadata for Data Management: A Tutorial: Data Repositories
Research Hub
Why deposit in a data repository?
Depositing your dataset in a data repository can:
- Fulfill funder requirements for open and/or preserved data
- Share research with a larger and often disciplinary audience
- Improve online discovery
- Increase citation rates
- Preserve data for the long-term
Data repositories may require specific metadata standards and formats in order to deposit data. It is important to determine metadata standards used by a repository before beginning the metadata plan for your data.
It is important to have a conversation with repository staff about your project prior to listing the repository in your data management plan. The specifics of your project will determine whether a repository is able to accept your data deposit.
Repository Directories and Two Local Repositories
The following websites are great places to start looking for repositories:
- Libraries' Research Data Toolkit - Choosing a RepositoryThis page provides a number of considerations to evaluate in choosing repository, using three repositories available to UNC researchers as examples.
- Open Access Directory: Data RepositoryThis list of data repositories is part of the Open Access Directory. It covers data repositories from many individual disciplines as well as multidisciplinary repositories.
- re3dataThis is a global repository of research data repositories in different disciplines from health sciences to the humanities.
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The following repositories are available to UNC researchers at no charge. See the Choosing a Repository page for a comparison chart.
- Carolina Digital RepositoryThe Libraries' repository is available for UNC faculty, staff and students to deposit research works, including data sets, resulting from their work at the University.
- UNC DataverseAn online, open-source data repository hosted by the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science and available for all UNC faculty, students, and staff. UNC Dataverse enables long-term preservation and access to your research data in compliance with FAIR Principles and data archiving best practices and standards. For additional information about UNC Dataverse, please contact odumarchive@unc.edu.
