Data Centres for post-project storage

 

The AU RDM policy states that in the first instance, research data should be offered for deposit and retention in an appropriate national or international data service or subject-specific repository, as advised by the research funder. Below we detail such repositories along with further suggestions of discipline specific repositories which you may also wish to use. These repositories are also useful resources for data available for re-use within your own research.

There are other data repositories available, other than those listed below. If you do not feel that these are suitable for your data, it is possible to search for specific repositories or browse by subject area within the Registry of Research Data Repositories.

Please contact researchdata@aber.ac.ukif you would like any help or advice when choosing a suitable repository or if you feel details of another repository, which you have used regularly, should appear on this page.

Social Science, Arts and Humanities

The UK Data Archive is the curator of the largest collection of digital data in the social sciences and humanities in the United Kingdom. It supports the UK Data Service and also hosts the History Data Service, both described below.

‌UK Data Service is funded by the ESRC and deposit is made through ReShare (formerly ESRC Data Store). Its focus is the storage and sharing of primary research data from the social and behavioural sciences and ESRC projects, in particular.

The History Data Service (HDS) collects, preserves, and promotes the use of digital resources, which result from or support historical research, learning and teaching. The service is housed within the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex (see above).

The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) collects, catalogues, manages, preserves, and encourages re-use of digital resources created by archaeologists.

The Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) collects, catalogues, manages, preserves, and encourages the re-use of digital resources created by, and of relevance to, the visual arts education community.

Science

Zenodo is a European repository funded by OpenAIREplus; it is an open digital repository for everyone and everything not served by a dedicated data deposit service. It welcomes all research outputs from all fields of science regardless of funding source.

NERC has a network of environmental data centres that provide a focal point for NERC's scientific data and information within seven disciplinary areas. These centres are detailed below.

The British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) is the Natural Environment Research Council's (NERC) Designated Data Centre for the Atmospheric Sciences.

The NERC Earth Observation Data Centre (NEODC) archives and provides access to remotely sensed information from satellite and airborne sensors about the surface of the Earth.

The UK Solar System Data Centre (UKSSDC) provides a STFC and NERC jointly funded central archive and data centre facility for Solar System science in the UK.

BADC, NEODC and UKSSDC form part of the Centre for Environmental Data Archival (CEDA) run jointly with the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

The Polar Data Centre (PDC) coordinates the management of data about the Polar Regions collected by UK-funded scientists. Data includes information collected about plants, invertebrate, terrestrial geology, and marine geology.

The Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC) coordinates Centre for Environment & Hydrology data activities and is the NERC Data Centre for the Terrestrial and Freshwater Sciences.

The National Geoscience Data Centre (NGDC) contains the National Hydrocarbons Data Archive as well as the Earth Science Academic Archive and The National Geological Records Centre; providing extensive datasets and geological information going back more than two centuries. The NGDC supports the British Geological Survey’s science programs and is the designated data centre for Earth Sciences in the United Kingdom.

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) is a national facility for storing and distributing data concerning the marine environment. The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) requires that all marine environmental data generated from projects they support be deposited with us.

GoGeo is a geospatial information resource discovery portal. Data providers include academic institutions and commercial entities, as well as public submissions.

The BBSRC does not run its own data centre but provides examples of existing databases and public repositories that it supports in its data sharing policy (pdf).

One such example is the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Nucleotide Sequence Database (also known as EMBL-Bank), Europe's primary nucleotide sequence resource. Main sources for DNA and RNA sequences are direct submissions from individual researchers, genome sequencing projects and patent applications.

Dryad is an international repository of data underlying peer-reviewed scientific and medical literature, particularly data for which no specialized repository exists.