Open Data is research data that:
To make your data open to fellow researchers or the general public, data should be stored securely in a data repository. There are many options for depositing data into a repository:
Many fields have subject or disciplinary repositories, such as the Marine Geoscience Data System for marine geoscience, the National Snow and Ice Data Center for cryosphere research, or the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research for social science research. Re3data aggregates data repositories by domain. The Data Repositories Directory maintains an active list of subject repositories.
These include commercial options such as Figshare, which is owned by Digital Science, and open source solutions such as Zenodo, a repository developed by CERN. These repositories are discipline-agnostic and provide services that are generally useful when sharing data, like DOI-minting, license selection tools, and file preview functionality. Depending on your needs, a general data repository may be the best solution for you. Some publishers partner with select general repository services and offer free data deposit when a manuscript is accepted. Deposit options for these repositories may even be integrated into journals' manuscript submissions systems.
Institutional data repositories are general repositories that serve an institutional community. At IU Bloomington, our open repository, IUScholarWorks, is not limited by field or discipline, but exists to serve the Indiana University research community. IUScholarWorks has the advantage of long-term stewardship by libraries, unrestrictive policies, unlimited free storage, on-campus support, university branding, and no commercial interest or monetization of services. The IUScholarWorks repository follows best practices to ensure data management compliance, longevity, and accessibility of deposited data. The contents are indexed and discoverable through major search engines and all non-embargoed work is publicly accessible. You can deposit data for IUScholarWorks in our Data Deposit Dropbox.