U of G Research Data Repositories

There are many benefits to sharing your research datasets including compliance with data management and data deposit requirements or policies (e.g., Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy).

Additionally, depositing your research data in a credible data repository supports you in improving the FAIRness of your research datasets.

FAIR stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable data.

• Findable refers to how your data is described in a manner that allows others to discover, identify, and locate it.
• Accessible means your data is available and obtainable, even if access is restricted. It should comply with accessibility legislation and standards.
• Interoperable means your data is formatted to allow exchange and reuse between people and systems.
• Reusable means your data is described and shared in a manner that allows its reuse with minimal barriers.

The Data Repositories support FAIR data through:

• Dataset citations
  • Support the findability and accessibility of your dataset.
  • Are automatically generated when a draft dataset is created and include a unique digital object identifier (DOI), a persistent link to the dataset.
  • Can be used to share, cite and attribute the dataset.
• Researcher identifiers
  • Improve the findability of your dataset.
  • Allow you to add your ORCID identifier into the dataset record, linking your dataset to your scholarly record.
• Descriptive metadata
  • Support the findability and reusability of your dataset.
  • Provide built-in metadata templates to add and edit descriptive metadata.
  • Follow the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) international standard metadata schema.
• Data preservation
  • Support the accessibility, interoperability and reusability of your dataset.
  • Perform regular data integrity checks to flag unintended changes to the data files like file corruption or bit rot.
  • Transform tabular data files files (e.g., Excel, SPSS, STATA, R) into non-proprietary, preservation-friendly tabular text format (.tab) during file upload.
  • Ensure regular data backups to the Ontario Library Research Cloud.
• Terms of use
  • Support the accessibility and reusability of your dataset.
  • Allow you to apply terms of use to a dataset, such as a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) waiver, Creative Commons license, or custom terms.
• File access controls
  • Support the accessibility of your dataset.
  • Provide the ability to apply long-term file restrictions or short-term embargoes to control and manage access to data files.
• Mediated deposit
  • Support the findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability of your dataset.
  • Promote review of submitted datasets by Data Repositories curators for alignment with the dataset deposit guidelines following a standard curation workflow.
• Discoverability
  • Enhance the findability of your dataset.
  • Make the Data Repositories (and Borealis) discoverable through external tools such as Lunaris, a Canadian research data discovery portal, and Google Dataset Search.
• Version tracking
  • Support the reusability of your dataset.
  • Allow you to version publicly available datasets (e.g., editing dataset metadata or files).
  • Track changes made to the dataset after public release.