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Lesson 7 of 16

Curation

Some repositories are curated and have criteria your data needs to meet before you deposit it. Curators can work with you to help make your data more “FAIR” — findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.

Persistent Identifiers

Most repositories provide you with a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI) that makes your data easier to find and to cite. Whether or not a repository issues a persistent identifier is something you want to check in advance, especially if you need a persistent identifier to comply with any other policies governing your research. For example, some publishers require that data associated with your publication be deposited and that you provide them with a DOI.

Preservation

Preservation involves ensuring your data is accessible in the future. This process involves keeping copies of your data and checking that these copies do not get corrupted over time.

Some repositories also convert files to new formats as old formats become obsolete or, alternatively, provide other avenues for access. Not all repositories are necessarily intended for long-term preservation. You want to know if the repository has an established commitment to preserve your data for a specified time period, which may be determined based on the data continuing to have value over time.

Certification

Some repositories are certified as compliant with a particular set of standards. Examples of standards include:

• The CoreTrust Seal Trustworthy Data Repository Requirements
• Trusted Digital Repository (TDR) designation — ISO 16363

Repositories pursue these types of certifications to demonstrate their trustworthiness. A certified repository should remain in existence as time passes. This is an important advantage of sharing your data in a repository rather than on an individual website.

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