These slides present an orientation to ICPSR's public data sharing service called openICPSR. This is a research data sharing service for the social and behavioral sciences. It allows the public to access research data at no charge meeting public access requirements of federally sponsored research.

1. An Orientation to ICPSR’s
Public Access Data Collection
March 2014

2. Orientation Points
• What is openICPSR
• Who might use openICPSR
• How is it different from ICPSR
• Why is there a charge
• How is openICPSR unique
• Why should institutions maintain membership
in ICPSR – the requested talking points
• What other openICPSR services will be
offered
Please be sure to view slide notes for additional insights.

3. What is openICPSR?
openICPSR is a research data-sharing service for the
social and behavioral sciences. It enables the public to
access research data without charge—or in the case of
restricted-use data, for nominal charge.

4. Who might use openICPSR?
openICPSR has been developed for use in the
social and behavioral sciences. This includes:
• Researchers required to share data freely with
the public to comply with grant/contract
requirements
• Researchers required to share sensitive data
with the public from a secure digital environment
• Researchers, including students, who want to
share data publicly as good practice or for the
purposes of replication

5. How is openICPSR different from
ICPSR?
openICPSR
• To sustain itself as an
ongoing service, there is a
charge to deposit data in
openICPSR
• Data are freely available to
the public (or in the case of
restricted-use data, for a
nominal charge)
• Accessed data may be fully
curated or may be available
only in the raw form as
originally deposited
ICPSR
• ICPSR sustains itself through
institutional member fees;
there is no charge to deposit
(donate) data
• Data are available only to
individuals affiliated with
member institutions
• Data are fully curated
including professional
processing, value-added
documentation, and
renderings in popular
statistical programs and online
analysis

6. Why is there a charge for openICPSR?
• openICPSR charges a fee to sustain the service
such that data deposits will be available both now
and into the future
• Effective data curation carries costs. Fees are
charged to cover costs including:
– Curation professionals who review metadata and
catalog the data
– Technology professionals who maintain functionality of
the website
– Costs for multiple copies of the deposit (preservation)
to ensure the safety of the deposits (storage and
servers)

7. How is openICPSR unique compared
to other data service providers?
openICPSR is the only public data-sharing service:
• Where the deposit is reviewed by professional data
curators who are experts in developing metadata (tags)
for the social and behavioral sciences
• With an immediate distribution network of over 750
institutions looking for research data, that has powerful
search tools, and a data catalog indexed by major
search engines
• Sustained by a respected organization with over 50 years
of experience in reliably protecting research data
• Prepared to accept and disseminate sensitive and/or
restricted-use data in the public-access environment

8. Why should openICPSR’s unique
attributes matter to depositors?
While openICPSR is a new data-sharing service, it is backed by
ICPSR
• Discoverable: Posting data online isn‟t enough. To maximize
usage, data must be easily discovered. ICPSR is an expert in
tagging scientific data for discovery by potential users
• Usage: ICPSR‟s data catalog is searched by thousands of
individuals keenly interested in downloading and analyzing data; the
catalog is also indexed by search engines connecting still more
potential analysts to the data
• Sustainable for the long term: ICPSR has existed as a data
archive for over 50 years; depositors need not worry that their data
will suddenly disappear due to a loss, for example, of funding
• Secure dissemination of sensitive data: ICPSR is prepared to
accept restricted-use data as it has the infrastructure and working
knowledge in place to store and disseminate it securely to the public

9. What types of deposit packages does
openICPSR offer?
There are two openICPSR package types:
1. Self Deposit: Enables research scientists to deposit
data & documentation on demand and provide
immediate public access. Depositors receive a DOI and
data citation upon publishing and a metadata review
shortly after publishing. The cost is $600 per project.
2. Professional Curation: Enables a research scientist to
tap all aspects of ICPSR‟s curation services. The fee
depends on the complexity of the data and the curation
services desired. Scientists must call for a
quote, preferably during the time the grant proposal
(specifically the data management plan) is being
prepared.

10. How will openICPSR disseminate
sensitive data to the public?
• The deposit of sensitive (restricted-use) data is similar to
the deposit of non-sensitive data except that the depositor
will indicate that the data should be for restricted-use only
• Dissemination of sensitive data will be through ICPSR‟s
virtual data enclave; in this environment, data never leave
the secure server and analysis takes place in the virtual
space
• Scientists desiring to access the data will need to apply for
the data, secure IRB approval, and will pay an access fee
• openICPSR will accept sensitive (restricted-use) data at
launch; dissemination of sensitive data is expect to take
place in late 2014

11. You may ask yourself, with openICPSR, data
will be free to the public. Why should an
institution maintain a membership in ICPSR
when the data are free to the public in
openICPSR?

12. Why should institutions maintain
membership in ICPSR?
In openICPSR, what is deposited is what you get.
• While openICPSR has been designed to be for long
term archiving, self deposits will not be „curated‟ to
correct for misleading/missing
documentation, missing values, corrupted
files, mislabeled variables, etc.
• openICPSR will provide only bit-level preservation
meaning the files will not be migrated to current
versions of software
• Data will not be rendered into various forms for
statistical packages for ease of analyst use; rather it
will only be available in the format deposited

13. Why should institutions maintain
membership in ICPSR?
The population of professional curation
package datasets in openICPSR will be slow to
build.
• ICPSR has been providing numerous estimates
for the professional curation package for grant
proposals to meet public data sharing
requirements, however . . .
• The lifecycle of research data is long: proposals
must be funded, research conducted, data
deposited, and professional curation completed
prior to public access

14. Why should institutions maintain
membership in ICPSR?
Benefits of membership in ICPSR continue, even in the
public data access environment:
• Exclusive access to over 28,800 members-only datasets
• Access to fully curated, analysis-ready datasets with
professional metadata, stats package
conversion, standardized codebook, variable-level
search, data-related bibliography, and other data tools
• Access to historic data in curated form for the purposes
of longitudinal, time series, and comparative analyses
• Teaching and instructional tools
• Discounted tuition for ICPSR Summer Program courses

15. Why should institutions maintain
membership in ICPSR?
Benefits of membership in ICPSR exist for the
openICPSR collection too
• Individuals affiliated with ICPSR member
institutions receive 10X the storage capacity for
openICPSR project deposits
• Members of ICPSR will receive exclusive access
to fully curated self-deposited data deemed
valuable to fully process for the use of the
consortium

16. What other services is openICPSR
considering?
• Bulk self-deposit subscription: enables a
university, library, or center to pre-purchase a large
number of self-deposits. The entity is provided a
coupon code that enables the individual depositor to
deposit without incurring a fee
• Branded institutional/departmental repository
powered by openICPSR: For an annual fee, enables
a university, library, department, or agency to utilize
the openICPSR repository but with the entity‟s own
branding
• Journal replicated data collection: For an annual
fee, enables a journal to brand openICPSR for use as
the journal‟s replication data tied to articles it
publishes

17. Tips for Evaluating a Data Sharing
Service
Questions to consider when
selecting a data sharing service:
• How will the service sustain itself? Does
it have a long term funding stream?
• How will the service care for my data in
the long term should the service fail? Is
there a plan? A safety net?
• Can the service quickly maximize
discoverability of my data? Does it
explain how it will do so?
• Does the service have a network of
interested researchers & students
seeking data? Will my data get used?
• Does the service have knowledge of
international archiving standards?
• Does the service provide a DOI, data
citation, and version control should I
need to update my files?
• I have sensitive data to deposit. Does the
service understand how to secure it upon
intake and when sharing? Does it have
experience in this area?
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18. Exploring the Website – www.openicpsr.org

19. How can I learn more?
• Explore www.openICPSR.org (esp the FAQs)
• Sign up for our email announcements -
www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/membership/lists/index.jsp
• “Like” ICPSR on Facebook; follow ICPSR on
Twitter & YouTube; join ICPSR‟s LinkedIn
group
• Find our presentations on www.slideshare.net
– user: icpsr
• Contact user support – netmail@icpsr.umich.edu

20. Your Questions