Below are the checklist and some sample question provided by Digital Curation Centre for data repositories evaluations. You can visit their website for more details.
1. Is a reputable repository available?
- Is the repository listed in repository registries or broadly recognised in the research domain?
- Is the repository supported by any institution?
- Is the repository endorsed by a relevant funder, journal, or learned/ professional society?
- Does this data repository have a local, national, or international user base?
- Is the repository certified to an appropriate international standard？
2. Will the repository take the data you want to deposit?
- What data types or domains the repository accept?
- Does it focus on data types or domains similar to that which you have to deposit?
3. Will the data be safe in legal terms?
- By agreeing to the terms and conditions of the repository, will you be breaching other data protection principles or confidentiality agreement with data subjects or owners? Will you be in breach of copyright, or any contract terms covering intellectual property in the research?
- Does the repository allow you to assign rights or license to your data or collections? Does it allow you to apply bespoke access conditions or your own license where appropriate?
- Was your data collected or created in accordance with legal and ethical criteria prevailing in the data producer's geographical location or discipline? Does the repository reviews and manages disclosure risks in the data you deposit with them?
- Does the repository allow you to define access rights to specified user groups and permissions to access, edit, move or delete files/objects?
4. Will the repository sustain the data value?
- Does the repository publish and catalogue comprehensive metadata?
- Is the metadata discoverable? Is the repository able to harvest data or be harvested by third-party sources, e.g., other repositories, author IDs, search engines etc.?
- Is persistent identifier such as DOI generated for the data?
- Does the repository have clear guidelines of preservation to ensure data reusability, e.g., file checking and preservation planning, data integrity & fixity, continuity strategy, version control?
5. Will the repository support analysis and track data usage?
- Does the repository provide citation and usage tracking?
- Does the repository support comprehensive search and browse options?
- Does it support data mining and visualisation?
Source: Where to keep research data by Digital Curation Centre
