Deposit Your Data
Data Deposit Your Way
Now that you have decided to house your data with ICPSR, the next step is the deposit! You can choose to have your data expertly curated by ICPSR staff or publish it yourself.
Choosing to Self-Publish
When you choose self-publishing, you skip ICPSR’s curation process and can make your data available immediately. You receive a persistent identifier called a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), users can download the files you supply, and you can see how many times your project has been viewed and downloaded. This option is great for sharing replication data linked to a publication or if you’re confident in managing privacy risks. Some funders support self-publishing to increase data availability while reserving curation for selected projects.
ICPSR doesn’t review self-published data, so you’re responsible for cleaning and formatting your data, creating metadata, reviewing for disclosure risks, and providing documentation. Your data will be available only in the format(s) you provide. We recommend including all necessary documentation to ensure others can independently interpret and use your collection.
Choosing Professional Curation
When you choose professional curation, ICPSR does the work to review your data for privacy risks and create a metadata record to make your data easily findable on our site and the web. We’ll also convert your data into downloadable SAS, SPSS, Stata, R, and delimited files, compile all documentation, and create a standardized codebook and suggested data citation. Plus, we add your variables to our Social Science Variables Database and often equip your data for online analysis. Your data will be given a persistent identifier (DOI) and you will be able to see how often your data have been downloaded. As with self-publishing, we encourage you to include all necessary data and documentation to ensure others can understand and use your collection.
Interested in learning about the steps ICPSR’s team takes to publish the data? Check out the Data Publishing Timeline.
What is included? | Self-published | Curated by ICPSR |
|---|---|---|
Persistent identifier (DOI) | ✅ | ✅ |
Utilization reporting available | ✅ | ✅ |
Reviewed & remediated for privacy risks | No | ✅ |
Data converted to SAS, SPSS and other formats | No | ✅ |
Compilation of documentation | No | ✅ |
Metadata record creation | No | ✅ |
Standardized codebook created | No | ✅ |
Suggested data citation | No | ✅ |
Variables added to SSVD | No | ✅ |
Equipped for online analysis | No | ✅ |
Added to ICPSR’s Bibliography | No | ✅ |
User support | No | ✅ |
Beginning the Process
Whether you choose to self-publish or to have ICPSR curate your data, we are here to help make the process as simple and straightforward as possible. Use the Depositor Checklist to guide you through the process. Some prefer to complete the deposit all at once, while others take it step by step over time. The goal is to make the deposit process as smooth as possible without overwhelming you. To start, visit the “Share Data” section on the ICPSR homepage and select “Start Your Deposit.” This will take you to a deposit survey that helps you decide between self-publishing or curation. The survey asks about your project’s funding and purpose and explains the differences between the two options.
If you choose to have ICPSR curate your data, we will review your data for technical issues, document it, and make it available in multiple formats like R, SAS, SPSS, Stata, and delimited files.
If you want your data to be available immediately, without ICPSR’s review and curation, choose “self-publish.” The data will be distributed as-is, exactly as provided.
Some of our topical archives have “Deposit Data” or “Deposit Your Data” links on their pages that bypass the deposit survey and take you directly to the deposit form for curated data so the data are directed to the staff of that archive.
After You Make Your Selection
Now that you’ve started the deposit process, please fill out the details like principal investigators, title, funding, project description, and methodology. This helps others find and use your data responsibly. The goal is to make your data discoverable and usable for future research.
In this section, provide a detailed description of your data, including study design, sample, and methodology. This information is crucial for others to understand and use your data. Check the ICPSR Metadata Documentation Portal for guidance on what to include. Providing quality information in the deposit form helps us connect users with your data.
We prefer to receive data formatted in one of the statistical packages (R, SAS, SPSS, or Stata), but delimited or ASCII files are accepted with proper documentation like a data dictionary or codebook. Please ask ICPSR staff about other acceptable file formats. Ensure variables have clear labels, value labels, and missing data codes.
For qualitative data, refer to the Guide for Sharing Qualitative Data at ICPSR.
Documentation files are integral to the reuse of a data collection. That is why it’s important to submit documentation that explains your data collection thoroughly. Documentation includes codebooks, user guides, questionnaires, README files, and more. Documentation is best when it integrates question text with variable information when possible.
Remove direct identifiers before depositing your data. If your data contains identifiers, explicitly mention it during the deposit submission process. ICPSR can handle such data under certain conditions, following study participants’ consent and IRB approval. For additional information about how we handle sensitive data, check out Preserving Respondent Confidentiality.
If you choose curation, ICPSR will review your data for disclosure risks and work with you to address them. This might involve creating public and/or restricted-use versions of your data. More details are available at Restricted-Use Data Management at ICPSR. For specific questions about how we handle sensitive data, contact ICPSR User Support.
Data Publishing Timeline
ICPSR helps the research community by making research data easy to use for others. This involves a team effort to handle sensitive data responsibly and ensure the data can be used without needing to consult the original researchers. ICPSR works closely with data producers to accomplish the steps outlined on this page.
These steps describe what happens for data that ICPSR curates. If you choose to self-publish, you will create the record for your data and the data and any documentation will be available immediately upon your clicking “publish.” A persistent identifier (DOI) will also be generated at that point.
Pre-Deposit Consultation and Deposit Assistance – Prior to deposit, data producers may wish to discuss their needs with ICPSR. We’ll explain the process, including what to expect and what you’ll need—like documentation, questionnaires, preparing your data for submission, and navigating the online deposit form. If your data contain sensitive information, we’ll discuss dissemination options for sharing and any necessary restricted-use data agreements.
Many factors contribute to how much time it takes for data to be ready for deposit, even after data collection is complete.
If you choose to self-publish the study rather than using ICPSR’s curation services, your data will become available immediately. Otherwise, ICPSR completes an initial review of your deposit to determine whether there are disclosure concerns with the data and to evaluate the completeness and condition of the data. The length of the review will depend on how complicated the data are, but is typically completed within a month once the review has begun.
Following initial review and throughout the process, if we need more information about the datafiles or documentation you’ve shared data, we will reach out to you.
During this step, we prepare the data for release on our site and fully describe it in a structured way (metadata) so the data are discoverable. In general, larger datasets with multiple files will take longer to curate than smaller datasets. To learn more about data curation, check out ICPSR 101: What is Data Curation? and ICPSR 101: ICPSR’s 3 Levels of Data Curation.
For curated studies, ICPSR releases the study and its documentation, performs post-release checks, and announces the release. You are notified via email when your data are released and a link to those data is provided in the email.
For self-published studies, data and documentation are published immediately by the depositor. No checks or additional action is taken by ICPSR.
After release, ICPSR provides technical support and restricted data applicant support, and processes and monitors restricted-use applications. For studies that have been curated, ICPSR can also assist with performing study updates and incorporating data resupplies as needed.
Your Data Collection After Publication
ICPSR makes it easy for people to access your data after release, and for you to track usage of your data. Some things you can expect from a fully-curated study include:
All ICPSR studies are given a study home page. The home page provides information on how to download the study, or otherwise how to apply for access. The home page also contains the study metadata, the information about the study that users will use to determine if the study meets their needs.
All ICPSR studies receive a Digital Object Identifier, or DOI. The DOI is a persistent link that will always lead to your study, making it handy to use in citations or provide to colleagues. If ICPSR makes any changes to a study’s URL, we are contractually bound to both the depositor and our DOI partner, Datacite, to update the DOI so it reaches the correct study.
We make it easy to monitor use by providing usage information and download counts on the study homepage. The reports show how many times a dataset has been viewed and downloaded, as well as information on users’ academic status (i.e., faculty, graduate student, or undergraduate), department or field, and institutions using the data. Identities of individual users are not disclosed.
The ICPSR’s Bibliography team monitors citations of ICPSR’s studies and compiles them so that related publications are available on each study homepage. This allows you to continually measure the impact of your data publication.
The data in your study is searchable at the variable level, so that users can see exactly what is in the collection prior to download, and even access summary statistics.
Some studies will be available for online analysis. This allows users to explore and even analyze the data without downloading it.
If your study is restricted access, ICPSR will manage access based on agreed-upon terms of use. Users can apply for access directly via ICPSR, and ICPSR will determine whether the request is appropriate.
ICPSR is committed to long-term preservation of published studies. ICPSR maintains redundant backups to ensure that data cannot be lost and maintains checks against degradation of data. As software formats change, we will continue to make your data available and usable.