Start Deposit

ICPSR welcomes and encourages deposits of digital data. Depositing data into ICPSR is free. Deposits are made using a secure data deposit form to describe the data collection and upload content. For an overview of ICPSR deposit services for both public-use and restricted-use data, please refer to Depositing Data with ICPSR. For best practices in preparing data for sharing, refer to ICPSR's Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving. In addition to the information about depositing data below, we have compiled some frequently asked questions.

What Should My Deposit Include?

Deposits should include all data and documentation necessary to independently read and interpret the data collection:

1. Data File(s)

   ICPSR encourages depositors to submit data files for archiving as SAS, SPSS, or Stata files if they are quantitative data. ASCII files are also acceptable if setup files accompany them. Datasets in other formats are accepted as well.

   For quantitative data, each variable in the data collection should have a set of exhaustive, mutually-exclusive codes. Variable labels and value labels should clearly describe the information or question recorded in that variable. Missing data codes should be defined in the data file. For qualitative data, review the Guide for Sharing Qualitative Data at ICPSR.

   Please note that ICPSR can accept data with identifying information under conditions consistent with the study participants’ consent and the relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval. For additional information about how we handle sensitive data, check out ICPSR’s Approach to Data Confidentiality. If you have specific questions about how we handle this type of data, contact us directly at ICPSR-help@umich.edu.

2. Documentation File(s)

   Documentation files are integral to reuse of a data collection and should thoroughly explain the data collection. Examples of documentation files include codebooks, copies of data collection instruments, user guides, README files, summary statistics, project summaries, and bibliographies of publications using the data. Documentation can be submitted as Microsoft Word, ASCII, or DDI XML files, among other formats. Documentation that has the question text integrated with variable information is preferred.

3. Study-Level Description

   ICPSR users are able to discover, understand, and analyze data because every new or revised ICPSR study includes descriptive information (metadata) such as the study title, principal investigators, and summary, as well as more detailed information about the study design, sample, and methodology. Much of the information used by ICPSR data curators to create the study description comes from the ICPSR data deposit form. Please review the ICPSR Metadata Documentation Portal to learn more about the study-level metadata to include with your data deposit.

What Happens to My Data After the Deposit?

After depositing a data collection, an ICPSR data curator reviews the data and documentation, builds a study description for the study home page, performs a disclosure risk review to determine access level, and standardizes the files for usability. All curation work is quality checked before data are approved for release on the ICPSR website. Data from Start to Finish provides an overview of the steps from pre-deposit through the post-release support of data. For a more in-depth discussion of ICPSR's approach to digital curation, please visit the Data Management page.

Access and Preservation Formats

ICPSR follows current and best practices for the long-term preservation of data. Currently, ICPSR stores quantitative data as ASCII and setup files for the statistical software packages (i.e. SAS, SPSS, STATA and R), and preserves documentation using XML and PDF/A. Once curated and preserved, data releases are assigned a persistent identifier and data citation to support proper attribution.

How Do I Report My Research Findings?

After you've completed your research and have published your findings, ICPSR would like to add your publication to our Bibliography of Data-related Literature, which links to the data you used and analyzed. To that end, ICPSR requests that you send citations to publications to bibliography@icpsr.umich.edu.