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Research Data Management

This guide is intended to assist researchers with data management and provide access to data management tools and services.

General Purpose Repositories

In Canada, two general purpose repositories that you may wish to deposit your data in include: Dalhousie University Dataverse @ Borealis, and the Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR). If these are not suitable, you may also wish to look at other general repositories. 

Dalhousie University Dataverse @ Borealis

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.

Why you should use this repository

Dalhousie Library Services
  • Support from the Dalhousie Libraries (see next column)
  • Free to all Dalhousie University researchers
  • Useful for small to medium-sized datasets 
    • files ≤ 5GB
  • Hosted on Canadian servers in Toronto, Ontario
  • Create custom terms of use for your data

Ready to deposit? Please read:

What we offer:

  • Guidance on the deposit process 
  • Create sub-Dataverses
  • Assist with assigning permissions 
  • Review deposited datasets for:
    • completeness of metadata 
    • adequacy of file naming convention
    • if files can be opened
  • Provide workshops on using Borealis

What we do not offer:

  • Create metadata (readme files, data dictionaries, code books, catalogue metadata)
  • Review data for scientific quality
  • Data cleaning
  • File conversions
  • Data anonymization or de-identification
  • Data deposit

Federated Data Research Repository (FRDR)
Why you should use this repository Ready to deposit? Please read:
  • Free to all Canadian researchers
  • Useful for very large datasets (files greater than 5 GB)
  • Long term preservation of data is assured upon data ingestion with the help of the Archivematica preservation software
  • Data hosted on Canadian servers

Other general repositories
Dryad Non-profit repository allowing a total storage space of 50GB for US$120.
Figshare Commercial repository allowing a total storage space of 20GB for free.
Open ICPSR Accepts social and behavioural science research data. Different levels of curation services (from none to complete) are offered at varying prices.
OSF Open Science Framework (OSF) is a free and open source project management repository that supports researchers across their entire project lifecycle.
Zenodo A multidisciplinary platform hosted by CERN. Accepts all research outputs from all fields of science.

For even more options try searching re3data.org, the Registry of Research Data Repositories. 

Publisher Recommended Repositories

Some journals and publishers require researchers make the data associated with their papers publicly available to facilitate verification and replication of results. They may have a list of recommended repositories or may require you to deposit to a specific repository.

Some examples of recommended repositories are below:

Often, data sharing policies can be found in the "Instructions for Authors" or "Author Guidelines."

Some examples of data-sharing policies are below:

Subjects: *Multidisciplinary