Where to Share?: An Overview of the Landscape for Social Science Data Repositories

In April 2023, the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, in partnership with NOAA’s Weather Program Office (WPO), convened a workshop on sharing and reusing social science data. An important aspect of the workshop was learning more about the role and work of data repositories, not only in sharing and reusing data, but also in meeting new Federal requirements on public access to the results of federally-funded research. Data repositories have emerged as key contributors to, and proponents of, open science and open data, playing a crucial role in overcoming fundamental challenges with the sharing, publishing, preservation, and discoverability of research data. One of the key observations from the workshop was the varying levels of awareness among agency representatives and researchers on the abundance of existing data repositories, and the range of services and support they provide. Since the workshop, WPO has been surveying the landscape of data repositories, particularly social science data repositories, with the goal of better understanding opportunities for sharing and reusing social science data in weather and climate research. This presentation will provide a detailed overview of data repositories and other relevant topics, including persistent identifiers (PIDs) and emerging repository certification systems. Using data from one of the main repository registries (Re3data.org), we also provide specific information on the practices and policies of social science data repositories in the United States.