Dalhousie University's Dataverse is hosted on the Borealis website. Borealis is a publicly accessible data repository platform, that allows researchers to deposit and share research data openly with anyone in the world. Borealis uses source research data repository software developed by the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences (IQSS) at Harvard University. Borealis is hosted on Canadian servers located in Toronto, Ontario. More information about the technology behind Borealis is available on the Borealis website.
What are some benefits of using Borealis?
Borealis allows you directly deposit data, share data either openly or privately and discover data. It supports the creation of custom Terms of Use and restrictions. It also provides long-term access and persistent identifiers (dois). It also makes your data more discoverable to the research community online. More benefits can be found on the Borealis website.
Before using borealis, you should read and understand the Borealis Terms of Use. Please note that Borealis cannot accept sensitive or confidential data, and can only be used to share de-identified and non-confidential data only.
How to create an account and deposit data
1. Go to the Borealis website: https://borealisdata.ca/
2. Create an account by using the "Username/Email" option: https://borealisdata.ca/loginpage.xhtml using your Dalhousie University email address. Please note that in order to create your account you will need to agree to Borealis’s Terms of Use.
3. Once you have created an account, please email the Research Data Management Team at Dalhousie University to let them know you have created an account and would like to deposit data. They will assign to you the appropriate permissions to create your own Dataverse so you can add and publish datasets. You will not be able to add datasets until the Research Data Management Team has assigned these permissions to you.
Please note: Before creating a Dataverse, students need to be authorized by a faculty or staff member affiliated with Dalhousie.
What is a Dataverse?
A dataverse is a container for datasets (research data, code, documentation, and metadata) and other dataverses, which can be setup for individual researchers, departments, journals and organizations. It is also the name of the digital repository platform - for example: The Dalhousie University Dataverse.
Dalhousie Libraries Research Data Management team can help you set up a Dataverse for your research and grant you administrator rights. As administrator, you can manage various settings such as themes and widgets, permissions, roles and access, guestbooks and more.
What is a Dataset?
A dataset in Dataverse is a container for your data, documentation, code, and the metadata describing this Dataset.
References
The Dataverse Project. (2016). Dataverse management. Retrieved from http://guides.dataverse.org/en/4.3.1/user/dataset-management.html.
The Dataverse Project. (2016). Dataset + file management. Retrieved from http://guides.dataverse.org/en/4.3.1/user/dataset-management.html.
Scholars Portal has an excellent guide outlining the steps required to add and publish a dataset. Please note that in order for a dataset to be published, the dataverse in which it is deposited much also be published.
Note: Dataset Deaccession
Before you publish your dataset, please review it carefully as once it is published, it cannot be deleted. However, if you have a legal or valid reason, you can deaccession a dataset or a version of a dataset. If you absolutely need to do this, the Dataverse User Guide provides the required steps to do this. It is important to note that once deaccessioned, a tombstone landing page with the basic citation metadata will always be accessible to the public if they use the persistent URL (DOI or Handle) in the dataset citation. However, they will not be able to see any of the files or additional metadata previously available prior to the deaccession.