Promoting high-quality research and informing policy
through free access to thousands of publications and datasets
Why Should I Archive My Data?
Archiving data benefits data producers, researchers and policy makers, and the scientific community as a whole.
Benefits to the Data Producers
- Researchers often fulfill funding agency obligations by archiving data with Research Connections (RC).
- Your research is indexed, described, and displayed on the Research Connections website and can easily be located using the search tools.
- Other researchers and policymakers are encouraged to use your research and data.
- Distribution of data and studies is handled by Research Connections, freeing investigators from the necessity of responding to external requests.
- Real-time statistics on your data's usage are always available on the Research Connections website.
- Our expertise in long-term preservation of materials ensures that users will be able to retrieve and replace files that may have gotten lost or become corrupted.
- Submitted data are reviewed for respondent confidentiality issues and, in many cases, for data inconsistencies and data entry errors.
Benefits to the Research and Policy Makers
- Permits researchers to replicate and extend previous research and analyses
- Enables researchers, policy makers, and other stakeholders to easily access research and compare findings
- Promotes collaboration and dialogue between researchers and policy makers and encourages the development of new research projects
- Preserves data and research materials for future generations of researchers.
- Provides resources for training future researchers
- Fulfills grant obligations to make funded research available to the research community
“ Sharing data reinforces open scientific inquiry, encourages diversity of analysis and opinion, promotes new research, makes possible the testing of new or alternative hypotheses and methods of analysis, supports studies on data collection methods and measurement, facilitates the education of new researchers, enables the exploration of topics not envisioned by the initial investigators, and permits the creation of new datasets when data from multiple sources are combined. ”
-National Institute of Health (NIH)
Benefits to the Scientific Community
- Reinforces open scientific inquiry
- Encourages diversity of analysis and opinions
- Promotes new research and allows for the testing of new or alternative methods
- Improves methods of data collection and measurement through the scrutiny of others
- Reduces costs by avoiding duplicate data collection efforts
- Provides an important resource for training in research