Archiving Data
What to Keep
The DCC provides comprehensive guidance to help researchers assess what data to keep:
Where to Archive Data
There is no easy answer to this! General advice suggests to first check any funder guidance, then any well established subject or community repository options, otherwise use Swansea University’s data storage solution (see below).
- Some funders mandate their own repositories for research data:
- General lists of data repositories that can be browsed by subject
- re3data.org (all subjects)
- Biosharing.org (for life, environmental and biomedical sciences)
The DCC has a “Where to keep research data checklist” which looks at how to approach the following questions:
“1. is a reputable repository available?
2. will it take the data you want to deposit?
3. will it be safe in legal terms?
4. will the repository sustain the data value?
5. will it support analysis and track data usage?”
Swansea University’s Data Storage Facility
If no suitable subject or funder data repository is available, Swansea University has a community on the Zenodo service. This service is run by CERN who are expert at dealing with large datasets and guarantee to migrate the service to other repositories if it discontinued so it is robust enough to satisfy funder requirements. It will also provide a DOI for your data so that it is easier to find and promote.
Zenodo can store files of up to 2GB and offers a variety of licences. When choosing a licence you need to consider funder requirements and also whether there is any need for confidentiality in your research (see further: Sharing & Reusing Data). Although Zenodo encourages open data you do not have to make everything open.
Please note that while the university encourages the use of Zenodo for data, publications should always be deposited in the Research Information System.
