I’m unsure if my data should be public-use or restricted-use. What are the differences, and how do I decide?

Public-use data are data that contain no direct or indirect identifiers. Likewise, the data cannot be used in conjunction with any other available information to re-identify study participants. Public-use data files are available for immediate download from the ICPSR website after users agree to the ICPSR Terms of Use.

Restricted-use data may contain indirect identifiers or other sensitive information that study participants would not like known to others. ICPSR has a variety of mechanisms to handle restricted-use data. All restricted-use data files are only available to secondary users after submitting a formal request for the data and agree to several data protection controls through a Restricted Data Use Agreement.

If you believe your data should be restricted access, you should contact ICPSR-help@umich.edu to discuss how best to mitigate identifiable information in the data before depositing them with ICPSR. All data deposited at ICPSR undergo a thorough disclosure risk review by our professional data curation team. We will work with the researcher to mitigate any potentially identifiable information found in the data files by our staff to lower the risk of disclosure. No curated data will be made available to secondary users without undergoing this disclosure risk review, except for in special circumstances that are first discussed with the data depositor.

You can find out more about how ICPSR handles restricted data here.