This guide will support you in finding a suitable data repository for data sharing within your research community. One can find a list of commonly used research data repositories at the end of this guide.

What are research data repositories good for?

  • They provide permanent access to research data.
  • They are ideal for sharing data publicly with your research community.
  • You can make research data underlying published research findings openly available, as required by ETH Zurich.
  • You can also publish other data that you consider particularly valuable.

Why should I prefer discipline-specific repositories?

  • They improve findability and visibility of data among qualified researchers in the same field.
  • They collect additional, field-specific metadata, making the data more understandable and useful to other experts.

Guidance

Please follow the steps below to identify a suitable data repository for your research data:

1. Ask the researchers in your group which data repositories they use for data publishing.

Ideally, there is someone in your group or department responsible for data management whom you can contact for guidance.

2. Start exploring research data repositories at https://www.re3data.org/.

With over 3,000 indexed repositories, re3data it is the largest registry of research data repositories to date. You can apply a wide range of filters to refine your results.

3. Simply click “Search” on the re3data homepage to view all repositories and instantly browse the full list of indexed repositories.

4. Find a repository’s profile on re3data in two easy ways:

a) Already know the name (e.g., from step 1)? Type it into the search field at the top of the page and click “Search”. Then click on the repository name to view its profile.

b) Not sure yet? Click “Subjects” in the top-left filter menu. Select the research field that best matches where your data come from, browse the results, and click on any name to explore its profile.

Choose a repository commonly used in your research field – this boosts findability. Make sure it also meets the key criteria listed in step 5 below.

5. Check that the following three icons appear in the repository’s profile which highlight key features.

re3data displays icons in the top-right corner of a repository’s profile. They indicate essential properties of the repository at a glance. Check out the 

re3data FAQs for more details.

Open Access

This icon means the repository is publicly accessible. While some metadata pertaining to the data are openly available, access to the data itself can be open, restricted or even closed.

Licenses

This icon shows that the repository supports data licensing options. This means that you can define how others may use your data. Many support the Creative Commons Licenses.

Persistent identifier

This icon means each uploaded dataset gets a persistent identifier (PID). PIDs make your data easy to cite, find, and reference. There are several types of PIDs available. The icon above shows a digital object identifier (doi) as an example.

6. Please verify that the repository is non-commercial.

ETH researchers should avoid the use of commercial repositories whenever possible.

Check on re3data whether your repository is commercial (see repository details, column "Institutions" and then "Type of institution").

 Figshare, for instance, is a commercial repository owned by a private company. It charges individual users for storing published data over 20 GB (see Figshare’s pricing).

7. Check if your repository is listed in at least one of the following resources:

The resources above are maintained by funding agencies focused on compliance with their Open Research Data (ORD) policies. If your repository is listed, that’s a great sign. But don’t worry if it isn’t. The lists are not exhaustive, although they are regularly updated.

8. Please consult our additional services

The FAIR (i.e. Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) Principles are internationally recognised guidelines that aim at improving the reusability of digital assets, such as research data. Publishing research data according to the FAIR Principles is required at ETH Zurich. re3data profiles don’t fully confirm whether a repository follows the FAIR Principles.

Not sure about your repository choice? You’ve got several support options:

a) Request a FAIR assessment
We can assess whether your repository meets the FAIR criteria. Just email us at data-management@library.ethz.ch.

b) Do it yourself

If you prefer to do the assessment on your own: the FAIR criteria that underlie our quality assessment are available in our "Checklist for the Assessment of a Repository's Compliance with the FAIR Principles".

c) No repository that fits your discipline?

You can use the ETH Research Collection our generic FAIR data repository which is available to all ETH researchers.

9. Tell us which repository (or repositories) you use for data publishing.

We’re building a list of FAIR-aligned repositories used by ETH researchers to help others make informed choices. The list will be continuously updated.

Commonly used data type or field-specific repositories following the FAIR Principles

re3data ID: https://www.re3data.org/repository/r3d100012435

Landing page: https://idr.openmicroscopy.org/

Discipline: biological image data (for details of the scope please consult https://idr.openmicroscopy.org/about/submission.html)

Summary: Via the public Image Data Resource (IDR) repository, researchers can submit, search and access high-quality bio-image data that belong to published scientific studies. The scope of IDR overlaps with that of another repository for biological images named BioImage Archive (BIA). For the benefit of researchers dealing with these data types, submissions to IDR will be imported into BIA to enable data sharing between the two repositories.

re3data ID: https://www.re3data.org/repository/r3d100000039

Landing page: https://www.gbif.org/

Discipline: life sciences, biodiversity

Summary: The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is founded by the world's governments providing open access to data related to all diverse types of life that exist on Earth. Similar to the huge variety of life forms, data types available via the repository are very diverse including for instance collections of museum specimens, DNA barcodes and smartphone photos.

re3data ID: https://www.re3data.org/repository/r3d100010134

Landing page: https://www.pangaea.de/

Discipline: earth and environmental science

Summary: PANGAEA publishes data from earth system research. With PANGAEA, researchers can publish and archive georeferenced data, and the repository is open to all researchers in this field. Data uploaded to PANGAEA will be available for at least ten years.

re3data ID: https://www.re3data.org/repository/r3d100012611

Landing page: https://archive.materialscloud.org/

Discipline: (computational) materials science

Summary: Materials Cloud Archive is the repository for seamless sharing of data generated in the field of computational materials science or from material science experiments relevant to simulations. Data publishing is currently possible for authors affiliated with Materials Cloud partners or for data that support or contradict published computational results.

re3data ID: https://www.re3data.org/repository/r3d100013746

Landing page: https://www.swissubase.ch/en/

Discipline: humanities and social sciences

Summary: SWISSUbase is a national, open repository for research data deriving mainly form social sciences and the humanities. Researchers from SwissUbase Consortium partner institutions (i.e., FORS, LaRS, DaSCH, University of Neuchâtel) can publish data for free.

re3data ID: https://www.re3data.org/repository/r3d100013328

Landing page: https://archive.softwareheritage.org/

Discipline: no specific research field, but focused on any kind of software

Summary: Software Heritage Archive (SWH) aims to collect any kind of publicly available software and source code. SWH serves as a platform for sharing and preserving it for the long-term.

Repositories used at ETH Zurich

re3data ID: https://www.re3data.org/repository/r3d100012335

Landing page: https://dataservices.gfz-potsdam.de/web/

Used by ETH group/ ETH Department: D-EAPS

Discipline: geosciences

Summary: GFZ Data Services is an open data repository hosted at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany. Research data, research software and data reports related to any geoscientific disciplines is accepted. Datasets "range from large dynamic datasets deriving from data intensive global monitoring networks with real-time data acquisition to the full suite of highly variable datasets collected by individual researchers or small teams."*

(*in "" is taken from https://dataservices.gfz-potsdam.de/web/about-us)

re3data ID: https://www.re3data.org/repository/r3d100011910

Landing page: https://www2.earthref.org/MagIC

Used by ETH group/ ETH Department: D-EAPS

Discipline: geosciences

Summary:  MagIC "improves research capacity in the Earth and Ocean sciences by maintaining an open community digital data repository for rock and paleomagnetic data with portals that allow users to archive, search, visualize, download, and combine these versioned datasets. MagIC supports the international rock and paleomagnetic communities and endeavors to bring data out of private archives, making them accessible to all and (re-)useable for new, creative, collaborative scientific and educational activities."*

(* in "" is taken from https://www2.earthref.org/MagIC/about)


Helpful resources


Terms of use

The content "ETH Researcher's Guide to Data Repositories" created by ETH Library can be reused with no restrictions by indicating the creator and by citing the resource. Logos and screenshots on this page are taken from "re3data.org - Registry of Research Data Repositories. https://doi.org/10.17616/R3D last accessed: 2025-05-30" and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


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