Preserving Social Science Research Data

Most funding agencies now encourage principal investigators to make arrangements to store research data in a publicly accessible archive. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) expects all recipients of funding to include plans for data sharing and long term archving in their grant proposals. Many journals require that data discussed in articles should be readily available from an archive. At UCLA we offer support to faculty and students who would like advice and assistance in the data preparation and deposit process. Researchers should consider archiving of data as an integral part of the research process, beginning when the project is first being developed. It is important to plan for archiving activities as part of preparing funding proposals, hiring project staff, designing questionnaires, coding of responses, and documenting the final format and structure of publicly available file(s) and codebook(s). This site provides details on what you need to know and do in order to ensure your research is accessible in the future.

You will find information here on archving data at UCLA and our long-term preservation program and policies. This site provides some details for assistance in applying for external funding when a data archving or data preservation plan is needed. Some reasons for preserving your data in an archive are outlined and some pointers to data preparation are included here as well.

Archiving and long term preservation services are also offered at ICPSR. There are ongoing initiatives at ICPSR to support researchers; Data Sharing for Demographic Research and Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences. The Data Documentation Initiative is an international effort to establish standards for formatting study documentation.

On the left hand side of this page are links to sections with more information and resources. If you are interested in archiving your data or if you have questions, please be sure to contact the Data Archive staff.