ScholarsArchive@OSU is the institutional repository for the scholarly and creative outputs of Oregon State University's students, faculty, and staff, including theses and dissertations, publications, reports, and data. The repository is maintained by the University Libraries. Through the repository, OSU researchers can share their work and research data with a global community. ScholarsArchive@OSU collects, curates, preserves, and provides open access to contents stored in the repository, as part of the University’s commitment to open scholarship and collaborative research. In 2022, ScholarsArchive@OSU was awarded certification by CoreTrustSeal, an international, community based, non-profit organization promoting sustainable and trustworthy data infrastructures. 

ScholarsArchive@OSU characteristics

The decision on where to store your data may depend on your area of research. Depositing your data in ScholarsArchive@OSU has the following benefits:

• ScholarsArchive@OSU has robust features to curate and store research data produced through the creative and scholarly endeavors of OSU’s student, staff, and faculty researchers.
• Depositing your data in ScholarsArchive@OSU will make your data discoverable to the OSU community as well as to a global audience of researchers, as our content is discoverable via Google and other internet searches. 
• ScholarsArchive@OSU can customize the visibility for your data to four options: Public, Oregon State University, Embargo, and Private.
• ScholarsArchive@OSU has strong institutional backing and supports the University’s commitment to open and equitable research. 
• ScholarsArchive@OSU has been awarded the CoreTrustSeal certification for trustworthy data repositories. This international certification is based on a set of requirements and best practices for repositories including data description, infrastructure, interoperability, sustainability, and preservation. In meeting these standards and gaining certification, OSU joins a worldwide group of over 160 trusted data repositories.  

ScholarsArchive@OSU is not an appropriate repository for:

• Datasets that are not authored by at least one member of OSU.
• Datasets that contain sensitive or confidential data as defined by the University’s Data Management, Classification, and Incident Response Policy.

Subject-specific vs. General Repositories

Subject-based repositories are discipline-specific and, usually, well-known within a particular field. If your discipline has a widely used repository, depositing your data in that site will make it more likely to be seen by people in your field, increasing its chance for reuse and further influence. Generally speaking, if a subject-specific data repository exists for your research, it is a good idea to use. OSU Libraries' Research Data Services team can help you to select a data repository suitable to your needs.

ScholarsArchive@OSU is a general repository that accepts data from all subject areas. General data repositories offer easy to use solutions for large user communities and makes data discoverable because of their broad reach. 

Different funders have different requirements. Most of these align with the Desirable Characteristics of Data Repositories for Federally Funded Research published by the National Science & Technology Council. Below, is a summary of how ScholarsArchive@OSU meets these recommendations:

Unique Persistent Identifiers

All research made publicly available on ScholarsArchive@OSU gets allocated a DataCite Digital Object Identifier (DOI) at the point of publication. Unique, citable, persistent URLs are assigned to every item in the repository.

Long-term Sustainability and Preservation

ScholarsArchive@OSU is maintained and supported by OSU Libraries & Press. The ScholarsArchive@OSU repository is seen by the University as a significant contributor to the University’s mission. ScholarsArchive@OSU has a preservation policy outlining the repository’s preservation strategies and commitment to preservation.

Additionally, ScholarsArchive@OSU is built on the Samvera platform, “a grass-roots, open-source community of library professionals, including repository managers, developers, metadata experts, content owners and users.” The Samvera Community was founded in 2008 and currently has over thirty partners who have invested in them, with the goal to build a sustainable, long-term solution for digital preservation.

Metadata

Research dataset deposits and associated metadata/documentation files are reviewed by the Libraries’ data curators to ensure that content is discoverable, downloadable, understandable, usable, and shareable according to the license selected by the author. All data deposits in ScholarsArchive@OSU include, at minimum, the following metadata: title, creator(s), resource type, subject, abstract, a machine-readable license identifying usage rights, and a documentation file. Instructions on how to prepare documentation and metadata for dataset submission to ScholarsArchive can be found in the ScholarsArchive User Guide. 

Curation and Quality Assurance

All datasets submitted to ScholarsArchive@OSU go through a curation process by subject specialist librarians. The quality check on deposited material includes supporting the following aspects pertaining to readability and accessibility: 

• Are the files available in an appropriate file format? 
• Are the files readable? 
• Is there adequate documentation about the data? 
• In case of several files, is the folder structure clear, and are all files included? 
• Are the data files complete? 
• Is the data free of any sensitive information? 

Free and easy access

ScholarsArchive@OSU shares the University’s vision of open access scholarship and will ensure that any data deposited will be as open as possible and free to access. The vast majority of items in ScholarsArchive@OSU are public and can be freely accessed by anyone in the world with an internet connection. Users do not need to register or login to view or download items.

Clear Use Guidance

All datasets published in ScholarsArchive@OSU are accompanied by a license, and the license is clearly noted in the metadata. Data curators work with researchers to identify the best license for each work. Most datasets are licensed as Creative Commons CC0 or CC-BY for broad reusability. All metadata is licensed CC0. Depositors keep all their rights when depositing datasets, as specified in the deposit agreement. Details about permissions and access levels can be found in the Terms of Use for ScholarsArchive@OSU page. More information about Creative Commons licenses can be found on the Creative Commons website.

Security & Integrity

Security for ScholarsArchive@OSU is provided by the Oregon State University Information & Technology (UIT), which provides a robust, scalable, and adaptable technology ecosystem that provides continuity and reliability, ascertaining and managing risks to the university’s data and infrastructure. OSU’s Office of Information Security, which is a part of UIT, is tasked with identifying threats to the data housed in the repository, such as hackers, and the malicious software they use. 

The University’s Data Management, Classification, and Incident Response Policy identifies the various types of information at OSU, the means by which information is identified as requiring protection, the protections required, and the process that happens when a failure of those protections occurs. Dataset deposits in ScholarsArchive follow legal and policy requirements to maintain privacy, confidentiality, and Tribal and national sovereignty. ScholarsArchive@OSU does not accept sensitive or confidential datasets as defined by the Data Management, Classification and Incident Response Policy.  

Depositors must be authenticated members of OSU. Submitted datasets and their metadata records can only be changed by submitting authors and library staff. Once a dataset is approved, authors do not have access to the record and can work with staff to make changes when necessary. Removal of datasets from the repository is subject to ScholarsArchive@OSU’s Withdrawal, Replacement, and Access Restriction Policy.  

Library staff are available for consultations and guidance on any aspect related to submitting or using data in ScholarsArchive@OSU, including:

• Data curation
• DOI registration
• Consultations about licensing, copyright
• Readme templates

How to contact us: send an e-mail to scholarsarchive@oregonstate.edu

Thinking about including ScholarsArchive@OSU in your Data Management Plan? If you plan to use ScholarsArchive@OSU for your data sharing and preservation needs, when creating a Data Management Plan for a grant submission, you may use or adapt the following boilerplate language:

Data will be preserved and shared through Oregon State University’s Institutional Repository, ScholarsArchive@OSU. ScholarsArchive@OSU is certified by the Core Trust Seal. All data hosted in ScholarsArchive@OSU are assigned DOIs and are made available on the open web. Support for the deposit of content in ScholarsArchive@OSU is provided by the OSU Libraries & Press including: research data management best practices, data documentation and metadata support, and support for sharing research data in formats that enhance reusability.

This libguide page was created in collaboration between OSULP librarians and Shalini Ramachandran as part of the DSCPE program.