Research Data Management: Publishing Data: Options for Researchers

For preservation of research data, data should be submitted to discipline specific, community recognised repository where possible, or to a general, multidisciplinary repositories if no suitable discipline specific repository is available. 

The Research Data Zenodo Community for University College Dublin (UCD) is intended to be used for publishing research data created by researchers affiliated with UCD. UCD's Research Data Zenodo Community is managed by UCD Library.

Zenodo is a multi-disciplinary repository funded by the EU that can be used to publish all sorts of research outputs. This repository is run by CERN that is an expert at dealing with large datasets and guarantees to migrate the service to other repositories if it is discontinued, which means that it is robust enough to satisfy funder requirements. It will also provide a DOI for your data so that you and others can cite the dataset in a publication. 

Deposition of research data to the Research Data Zenodo Community is one of the choices for data deposition offered to University College Dublin researchers. Depending on the research data deposited and the characteristics of the project, other data repositories may be more relevant than Zenodo. Preference should be given to discipline specific data repositories and/ or repositories recommended by funders. Zenodo repository is a good option if no discipline related repositories are available.  

How to submit your data to Zenodo

Zenodo is open to all disciplines and you can deposit any kinds of data, such as datasets, models, spreadsheets, textual files or codes for free (max. 50 GB per upload). Publishing your data in Zenodo, does not necessarily mean that the data will be openly available for everyone. Research data records can be open, embargoed, restricted or closed. It is the responsibility of researchers submitting data to decide on the proper level of access, taking into account any ethical, intellectual property protection, security, and any other constraints. 

Data submission to Zenodo is very straightforward. Here are the main steps:

1. Go to https://zenodo.org and create an account
2. Go to Upload and select New Upload
3. Upload files that you want to deposit
4. Choose UCD Research Data Zenodo community as your community 
5. Choose a type of upload (e.g. dataset, audio files, software etc.)
6. Provide basic information that helps to customise your metadata. Metadata can answer questions like WHO created the data, WHAT is the content of the data, WHEN were the data created, WHERE is it geographically, HOW were the data developed and WHY were the data developed. To enhance the FAIRness of your dataset UCD Library strongly encourages you to create rich metadata, i.e. fill in as much information as you can given the time available to you.

• Provide a description of your data and information about authors, versions, language and key words
• Select the type of license and identify the access rights
• Provide information about your funding
• Add links to any related resources (for example, journal articles)

All submissions to the UCD Research Data Zenodo Community require validation by the Data Manager. Upon successful approval, data will be published online. You can find more about preparation of data for submission here (link). If you have any questions about the UCD Research Data Zenodo Community, please contact UCD Library’s Data Managers (rdm@ucd.ie)

UCD are now members of the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI), which is a national digital repository for Ireland’s humanities, social sciences, and cultural heritage data.

As members of DRI, researchers at UCD have access to 

• DRI Expertise & Collaborative Network
• DRI Training & Professional Development
• Long Term Digital Preservation
• Online Publication of Collections
• Sharing of Collections

Why deposit your data with DRI?

• DRI embed FAIR practices in everything we do
• Your data will be discoverable with thematically and location-specific collections from over 50 island-wide organisations
• They are actively engaged with European and Global data organisations and projects- DRI is the Irish node for Research Data Alliance, works with Europeana and is part of the ‘WorldFAIR: Global Cooperation on FAIR Data Policy and Practice’ project
• DRI work closely with Researchers- they are working with research projects like OS200, Feminist Art Making Histories and Full Stack Feminism 
• They are researchers too- DRI undertakes research projects - Our Archiving Reproductive Health project won the 2022 Digital Preservation Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy 
   

Interested in depositing humanities, social sciences or cultural heritage data with DRI?

Contact UCD Library Data Managers Jenny O'Neill at rdm@ucd.ie 

• We will assign appropriate access permission
• Depositors (researchers) are responsible for preparing data and metadata for deposit
• Further support and training is available from the DRI website

This is the primary resource for locating a domain or discipline specific data repository.

Search by specific research discipline and then filter by access categories, data usage licenses, whether the repository gives the data a persistent identifier etc. Re3data uses a series of symbols to indicate these key services.

To be registered in re3data.org a research data repository must:

• be run by a legal entity, such as a sustainable institution (e.g. library, university)
• clarify access conditions to the data and repository as well as the terms of use
• have a focus on research data

If there is no disciplinary-specific repository in your area select a general purpose repository. These can handle a variety of different data types. Charges may apply but can be included in a funding application. Key general repositories are listed below. This list is for information purposes only and is not exhaustive.