Archiving and preservation of research data is a core element of contributing to the scholarly record and enabling research to be evaluated, replicated and built upon. Many research funding agencies and publishers now require that the research data produced by a sponsored project or associated with a publication be placed into a repository for long-term discovery, access and use. Research domain data repositories, general purpose repositories, institutional repositories (such as UNM's LoboVault), governmental archives and publisher repositories all play a role in providing long-term preservation and access to research data products.
This research guide provides information about key domain repositories, UNM's institutional repository (LoboVault), and provides links to repository registries and criteria for evaluating repositories for specific use.
The growing number of research domain specific, general, and institutional data repositories makes it challenging to find the appropriate repository for your data. The following resources can help as they provide search tools or lists of recommended repositories that fulfill specific needs.
With the large number of repositories available for preservation and sharing of research data the development of criteria for evaluating repositories enables comparison of repositories for specific uses. Below we provide some resources that define criteria against which repositories can be evaluated and/or certified.