Repository Registers

Re3data

The register of repositories re3data includes more than 2800 repositories; the portal has 41 index entries for specifying the search.

Using of Re3data.org is recommended in the EC guide Guidelines on Open Access to Scientific Publications and Research Data in Horizon 2020.

You need to remember that this is a register of repositories, meaning that you should first search by broader subject areas and then move to a narrower range to find the repositories that you may be interested in. Search for specific subjects and data sets is conducted within the repositories that you are interested in.

The register has an easily understandable system of icons which indicate:

• whether the repository is an open or a closed repository 
• whether it has licenses 
• which persistent identifiers are used (DOI, hdl, purl or others) 
• has the repository been certified, etc

 

 

Examples:

If you search for open data in materials science, you start with the search term materials science. The search gives 80 results (20.01.2020); you can get a quick overview of the results based on the descriptions of repositories. Having chosen the repository of interest, you will conduct further searches within this repository.

*Search done on 26th of September 2019

If we search for repositories of social science we receive 337 results. Choose the Finnish Social Science Data Archive among them. Our search takes us to the Finnish data portal Aila.

 

*Search done on 20th of September 2019

Re3data also offers a visually attractive search by subject, Browse by subject, but there is a risk that you will not find repositories in a field that is too narrow.

 

Sometimes it is very difficult to decide which disciplinary repository  is the best known or rated the best among researchers. The Wikipedia page Data repositories may be helpful here.

OpenDOAR

OpenDOAR can be searched for data, but also for publications, software, patents, reports and conference materials. It is advisable to use advanced search to find the repository which meets your needs.

These statistics below show how the publication of research results in the repository has grown over the last two years.

The number of repositories registered in OpenDOAR is double that of re3data, because OpenDOAR also includes repositories of publications.