Research Impact Challenge: Day 3

What are repositories and why would you want to use them?

• A scholarly repository is an online archive for articles and other scholarly outputs.
• There are two kinds of commonly used scholarly repositories: institutional repositories and disciplinary repositories.
• Some repositories concentrate on scholarly outputs such as journal articles, conference papers, and presentations, while others concentrate on research data or computer code. Some generalist repositories will include all different kinds of scholarly outputs.  
• For our purposes, we will think of them as basically article vs. data repositories.  

The benefits of article repositories: Self-archiving or depositing your work in institutional or disciplinary repositories: 

• Leads to recognition, visibility, and wider dissemination of your work.
• Empowers you as an author to retain your self-archiving rights. 
• Assigns unique and stable links to your work.

Article Repository Types:

• There are two types of article repositories:
  • Institutional (e.g., YorkSpace, Osgoode Digital Commons, etc.)
  • Subject / Discipline-specific pre-print servers (e.g,, arXiv, SocArXiv, medRxiv, RePEc, etc.)
• The Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) is the best source for finding subject or discipline specific repositories.
• Tip! Check the Day 2 section on Open Policy Finder for more information on which article versions can be posted to a repository.

York's Institutional Repositories:

• York has two institutional repositories: YorkSpace & Osgoode Digital Commons
• YorkSpace: Faculty, postdoctoral researchers, students, and staff are encouraged to use YorkSpace to preserve their scholarly research outputs in an institutional context. Learn more about YorkSpace and how it can help you self-archive your work.
• Osgoode Digital Commons: This institutional repository preserves the scholarly research outputs of researchers affiliated with York’s Osgoode Hall Law School. Learn more about Osgoode Digital Commons and how to submit your work.

Subject / Disciplinary Repositories: Some of the most useful and popular disciplinary repositories for articles are:

• Physics, math, computer science, computational biology: arXiv
• Biology & life sciences: bioRxiv
• Clinical & social impacts of medicine: medRxiv
• Social science: SocArXiv
• Economics: RePEc

Research Data Repositories:

• Data repositories allow you to curate, publish, and preserve your research data.

Institutional and National Data Repositories for York Researchers:

• York has an institutional data repository called York University's Dataverse.
• Researchers at Canadian universities can also deposit data using the national data repository, Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR).

Generalist Data Repositories:

• Some general data repositories that cover a range of subjects, include:
  • Zenodo
  • figshare
  • Open Science Framework

Finding More Data Repositories:

• Re3data is a directory of data repositories across all disciplines.
• Consult the Generalist Repository Comparison Chart. 
• York University Libraries also maintains a list of discipline-specific data repositories.
• The University of Pittsburgh maintains a list of discipline-specific data repositories.

Other Data Repository Examples:

• Nature has a collection of science data repositories.
• The Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center (CDS) is a data repository for astronomy.
• The Qualitative Data Repository provides a repository for qualitative data research data for the social sciences.
• Open ICPSR is a repository for mixed methods research data for the social sciences.

How to complete today's challenge!

• Step 1: Read each of the tabs on this webpage:
  • What are repositories?
  • Article repositories
  • Research data repositories
• Step 2: Select one of your recent research outputs (e.g., data file, presentation, video, journal or conference article).
  • Option 1: Review some of the resources from today's challenge and select one of York’s institutional repositories (e.g., YorkSpace, Osgoode Digital Commons, or York University’s Dataverse). Determine if one of the repositories would be a good place to share your research output.
  • Option 2: If York’s institutional repositories won’t meet your needs, you can use OpenDOAR to find other article repositories or re3data for research data repositories.   
• Step 3: Fill out the challenge form (click below button) to show that you completed today’s challenge.

Need help with YorkSpace or research data repositories? Email diginit@yorku.ca for help with YorkSpace and email yul_rdm@yorku.ca for help with research data repositories.

Need help with Osgoode Digital Commons? Email digitalcommons@osgoode.yorku.ca for help.