Institutional repositories are not only for journal articles – all kinds of research outputs can be deposited and made open access. At Edinburgh Napier University, one of the services offered to researchers is to host datasets.

In the context of research, ‘data’ can be take many forms – often it is numerical or quantitative, but text-based forms such as interview transcripts are also data. Depositing data in a repository means that it is archived for the long term and becomes much more citable.

Some types of data have subject repositories that are the most appropriate place to store and publish datasets. For example, GenBank for genomic sequences, the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) for data in biology, or the UK Data Service for social and economic datasets. Funders may specify a particular location to deposit data for research they fund.

If there is not a suitable research data repository in your area, Napier’s repository can be used by anyone affiliated with the university to publish and preserve your data. We have a long-term storage solution in place and can also assign a DOI to datasets.

If you’re a Napier researcher who is interested in depositing data, please email RDM@napier.ac.uk or repository@napier.ac.uk.