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Research Data Management: Research data resources for your discipline

Subject-Specific Data Repositories

The best place to find research data for your subject area is a discipline-specific repository.

Sometimes this is called a subject-specific repository.

This is a repository that holds content specialising in your research discipline.

It will be attuned to your area: specific, narrow, authoritative and will have an expert focus.

It's expert authority is its strength for many researchers will know to look here for data in your area.

It is also potentially a very strong place for you to share data at the end of the project (unless you have a funder requirement that data must be shared elsewhere).

For some researchers the discipline-specific repository for your area may be obivous. For example:

Not knowing where to start

In such a case it is best to use the following general resources to identify which repositories exist for your research area and discipline, more generally:

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 promotes a culture of sharing, increased access and better visibility of research data.

FAIRsharing.org is a curated resource that provides information about data and metadata standards, databases, and data policies. It's a community-driven resource that helps users discover and share resources. 

It offers a catalogue of:

  • Open standards: reporting guidelines, terminology, and exchange formats
  • Databases: knowledgebases and repositories of data and other digital assets
  • Data preservation, management, and sharing policies from international funding agencies and regulators

FAIRsharing has a growing community of users, including researchers, developers, and publishers, interested in identifying relevant standards and their status and use in databases. 

 

Data Repositories for your Research Area

Biosciences

Chemistry

Engineering

Geosciences

Health & Medicine

Material Science

Physics (including Astrophysics & Astronomy)

Social Sciences

Interdisciplinary Data Repositories

Interdisciplinary or general data repositories are collections of research data that span multiple disciplines and are not focused on a specific subject. Examples include Dryad, figshare, and Open Science Framework. 

Examples of interdisciplinary data repositories

  • Dryad: A non-profit organization that stores data for scientific and medical publications. It's a general-purpose repository that is used for data that doesn't have a specialized repository. 
  • figshare: figshare is a general data repository or archive that allows researchers to publish all of their research outputs in an easily citable, sharable and discoverable manner. All file formats can be published, including videos, datasets and code. Optional peer review process.
  • Open Science Framework (OSF): A general data archive and tool which promotes open, centralised workflows by enabling the capture of different aspects and products of the research lifecycle.
  • Harvard Dataverse: A repository that combines data from multiple dataverses. It's managed by Harvard University. It includes the world’s largest collection of social science research data.
  • Zenodo: A free open-access repository for research data and software. It is hosted by CERN and funded by the European Union.