Research Data Archiving

Trent University Library actively encourages the deposit of research data into a reputable repository. We have two repositories that may serve your needs, and we can also refer you to other discipline-specific archives.

What do data archives provide?

  • support for public and restricted data
  • long-term access to data
  • support for data publishing workflows and versioning of data
  • assistance with creation of information (metadata) about data to find, understand and reuse them
  • a formal data citation to reference and find data
  • a persistent identifier (such as a DOI) to data 
  • assistance with meeting funding agency guidelines

What are research data? 

Research data are quantitative and qualitative sources of information gathered to support technical or scientific enquiry, research, scholarship, and creative practice. Research data are used as evidence in the research process and are commonly used in the research community as a method for validating, identifying or refuting research findings and claims. Research data are collected and used in scholarship across all academic disciplines and may take many forms such as experimental trial data, observational data, tracking data, third party and public sector data, monitoring data, processed data, visual data, and repurposed data.

Examples include documents, spreadsheets, laboratory notebooks, field manuals, diaries, questionnaires, transcripts, codebooks, video, sound recordings, photographs, films, designs or other graphical representations, test responses, slides, artefacts, specimens, samples, data files, models, algorithms, scripts, methodologies and workflows, protocols and more.

TRENT Univeristy Data Repositories

Trent University Library Digital Collections

Trent University Library Digital Collections includes a digital library of resources created at Trent or by members of Trent University. We encourage members of the university to contact the library about depositing pre or post-prints, conference papers, audio files, and other research outputs and course materials.

Scholars Portal Trent University Dataverse

Borealis logo

On June 23, 2022 Scholars Portal becomes Borealis! 

Scholars Portal Dataverse is an open-source tool developed by the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences (IQSS) at Harvard University. The Scholars Portal Dataverse is a repository for research data collected by researchers and organizations affiliated with Ontario universities, although anyone is welcome to use Scholars Poral Dataverse to deposit, share and archive data. Researchers control levels of access, which can be defined right down to individual files.  Files can be made public, be open to specific individuals, or kept completely private.

Once published in Dataverse, a citation and Digital Object Identifier (DOI) are created providing a persistent URL to the data set which can be used in publications.

All data are hosted securely on Canadian servers.  See the Scholars Portal Dataverse Guide for further information. Trent University researchers are encouraged to deposit data into Trent University Dataverse within Scholars Portal Dataverse. 

GUIDES to Dataverse

Scholars Portal Dataverse Guide (introdutory information / key definitions)

Scholars Portal Advanced User Guide (detailed "how to" guide)

A Brief Guide: Dataverse (summary sheet by Dataverse North Working Group) 

Dataverse Primer (summary sheet by Dataverse North Working Group)

Discipline-specific data repositories

In some instances, it may be appropriate to deposit your research data in a discipline-specific repository. Here are some useful lists of repositories:

Re3data.org Registry of Research Data Repositories  is an online registry of data repositories, which can be searched by subject, content type and country. Find a list of Canadian research data repositories. 

The OAI Registered Data Providers from the Open Archives Initiative (OAI)

The Open Access Directory (OAD)  list of open data access data repositories

The Univesity of Illinois OAI-PMH Data Provider Registry

Further Information

For assistance with archiving theses, pre or post-prints, conference papers, audio files, and other research outputs and course materials contact:

Dwayne Collins
Learning & Liaison / Digital Initiatives Librarian
Trent University Library

For assistance with archiving research data including spatial data, maps, surveys, microdata and aggregate data files contact:

Barbara Znamirowski
Head, Maps, Data & Government Information Centre
Trent University Library

We look forward to hearing from you and providing assistance!