Tips for Using DataLumos

How to Deposit Data

The Office of the AEA Data Editor has written a Step-by-Step tutorial on how to deposit data at DataLumos. Please review this tutorial before initiating your deposit. If you encounter issues or questions during the deposit process, please contact us at icpsr-data-rescue@umich.edu for assistance. 

Steps to Increase Findability of Data

Including metadata, or information about your data, will make the data easier to find and more useful to others. When archiving data with DataLumos, we recommend the following:

  1. Add a descriptive title: Title the project accurately and descriptively, preferably using the exact title provided by the agency that originally issued the data. The title should describe what the data collection is about, its geographic scope, and the time period it covered. 
  2. Verify the data producer: Data produced by or associated with a specific US government agency should list the agency as the author of the data in the “Government Agency/Principal Investigator(s)” field. Example: The American Time Use Survey is produced by the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. When uploading data, as you begin to type United States Department of Labor into the “Organization Name” field, you will be able to select Bureau of Labor Statistics. For organization names that are not in our database, you can simply enter descriptive text in this field. Please provide full agency names when possible. Acronyms are not recommended.
  3. Complete the summary field: Add a description or abstract to give secondary users a clear sense of the data collection’s purpose, substance, and key topics.
  4. Enter Original Distribution URL: Provide a link to the website where the data were obtained.
  5. Other metadata: In addition to the fields above, providing additional metadata and documentation files will be helpful to users. For example, if there is a pdf questionnaire or codebook associated with the data, please include that with your deposit. We also suggest taking and including a screenshot of the source website, if possible, so that the provenance of the data can be determined by subsequent users.

To see more information about any of these metadata fields, please see ICPSR’s Metadata Schema Documentation.  

See Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), 2003 (ICPSR 34085) for an example of what the metadata looks like once a study is published at ICPSR.

Plan for Large Data Submissions

Data over 2GB will take considerable time to upload; please plan accordingly. For deposits exceeding 50 gigabytes, please contact us at icpsr-data-rescue@umich.edu for another method of transfer.