Researchers who want to publish their data must issue it through a creditable repository, allowing for information and files to be discoverable by other individuals. Dryad and Zenodo are free, accessible tools that can support UC researchers organize their data.
Dryad is an open-source, research data curation and publication platform. UC Berkeley is a proud partner of Dryad and offers Dryad as a free service for all UC Berkeley researchers to publish and archive their data. Datasets published in Dryad receive a citation and can be versioned at any time.
Zenodo is an open-source repository supported by CERN. The repository archives data, code, and GitHub materials.
Dryad and Zenodo have partnered to enable researchers to upload and publish a variety of materials, including software and code. After logging into Dryad, the researcher will be guided through a workflow that enables them to upload code and software to Zenodo, or data to Dryad. The materials are assigned DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) and separate citations. Researchers uploading software to Zenodo will have the opportunity to assign an appropriate license.
When uploading to Dryad, select "upload software" to send code, scripts, and software to Zenodo.
An international consortium of more than 750 academic institutions and research organizations, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community. ICPSR maintains a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. It hosts 21 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields. Depositing data into ICPSR is free. Deposits are made using a secure data deposit form to describe the data collection and upload content. For an overview of ICPSR deposit services for both public-use and restricted-use data, please refer to Depositing Data with ICPSR. For more information, please email librarydataservices@
Note: Your research funder may require that data be deposited in a specific repository. For example, the NIH supports a number of repositories specifically designed for genomic and clinical data for health sciences. Make sure if there is a prerequisite set by your research funder before deciding which tool is best for you.
Specific categories can help keep data files safe and can be organized by their protection strength ability. Rules and regulations can aid in the process of storing and protecting data.
Enterprise Storage (SAN/NAS/S3) | Information Technology (berkeley.edu)
Types of Cloud Services | Information Technology (berkeley.edu)
These services are subject to change.
All data requires some measure of protection and security. The level of security necessary to protect data often depends on a combination of factors. It is important that individuals who have research files/data understand what data security expectations are, particularly at their places of study/work, and what is required.
UC Berkeley Data Classification Standard
Business impacts are reviews of data that occur when there is a significant loss of information and indicates risk of injury to individuals, potential of financial compensation, and/or negatively affects the University of California, Berkeley's system functionality.
Protection Levels are UC Berkeley's measures of how threatening it is to lose specific categories of data in the case of a security breach, along with how loss of data would effect business impacts.
Protection Level P4 (High Risk)
Protection Level P3 (Moderate Risk)
Protection Level P2 (Low Risk)
Protection Level P1 (Minimal Risk)
Another best practice is using a password manager program that helps secure access to the systems and/or tools used to work with data:
Library Data Services Program
Research Data Management