Data preservation focuses on making data available in the future. It requires that you make some decisions about which aspects of your data you want to preserve or dispose of for the long term for both long-term preservation/reuse and long-term accessibility/discovery. There are some considerations that will make it easier for you to determine if a dataset is worth preserving like:
Other Considerations:
Other things to consider when you are making preservation decisions include periodic preservation which is necessary in longitudinal studies and assessing whether file multiplicity or whether the final file version is sufficient.
The Library of Congress, National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) has created a thorough resource on formats for preservation:
Preservation Decisions:
Once you have made the decision to preserve the data, you must decide if you are going to submit it to a general repository.
Repositories are multifunctional; they can help manage your data, help with data discovery and accessibility, supply a persistent identifier for data citation, and provide long-term preservation. Note that domain/discipline-specific repositories have certain documentation/metadata standards and long-term file format standards that need to be honored in order to have your data deposited in that respective repository. The following is a list of publicly accessible repositories ranging from non-discipline specific to discipline specific ones – this list is not exhaustive:
Repository Directories:
Non-discipline Specific Repositories:
Discipline-specific Repositories (Biomedical):
Store cancer images by type and anatomical site.
The NIH genetic sequence database.
Worldwide biological molecular repository of information about their 3D structures.
Worldwide repository for all scientific fields.
Software repositories – it is highly recommended that you publish your software or computer programs in order to promote research reproducibility and more scientific discoveries. The following is a list of some software repositories:
