Open Access: Repositories

When are you allowed to submit your work to a repository?

All reputable repositories will ask you to certify that you own the rights to the work you are submitting. Unfortunately, many authors sign away all of their rights to journal publishers without trying to negotiate an alternative agreement. Before sharing your work in a repository or elsewhere, make sure you know what rights you have to that work. Here are some resources to help you:

Copyright FAQs
A helpful list of FAQs from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.
SHERPA RoMEO: Publisher Copyright Policies
Search for a publisher to see what permissions they allow for depositing materials in repositories and other types of sharing. While this site is a good reference, it is always a good idea to confirm the permissions in your Article Publishing Agreement (or equivalent) before depositing or sharing your published work.
SHERPA Juliet: Research Funders' Open Access Policies
Search for or browse funding agencies to see their policies and/or requirements for OA publishing and archiving.
Author Rights and the SPARC Author Addendum
A full set of resources from SPARC to help you learn more about your rights as author, and the tools to help you effectively manage your copyright.
Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine
This site will help you generate a PDF form that you can attach to a journal publisher's copyright agreement to ensure that you retain certain rights.

Literature Repository Directories

Directory of Open Access Repositories
To find repositories, you can search in this directory from the same organization that maintains SHERPA RoMEO.
Disciplinary Repositories - Open Access Directory
To browse repositories by discipline, view this list from the Open Access Directory.
OSFpreprints
OSFpreprints has compiled a large group of subject-specific repositories into one big repository. You can search or browse them individually or all at once, or submit your own preprint for inclusion.
Registry of Open Access Repositories
Browse by subject or search for specific repositories. Funded by JISC and hosted by the University of Southampton.

Selected Subject-Specific Literature Repositories

Below are a few subject-specific repositories for published and unpublished research literature. To locate additional repositories, search one of the directories listed in the box above.

arXiv
arXiv is a repository for various subjects in science, math, and economics.
bioRxiv
bioRxiv is a preprint repository for biological sciences. Subjects include cancer biology, genetics, pathology, epidemiology, pharmacology, immunology, and clinical trials.
medRxiv
medRxiv is a preprint repository for the health sciences.
PubMed Central
A repository for publications resulting from NIH-funded research and from other participating journals.
SocArXiv
SocArXiv is a repository for research in the social sciences, including law, arts & humanities, education, and behavioral sciences.
Social Science Research Network
SSRN is a repository for social science research.

UMB Digital Archive

UMB Digital Archive
The UMB Digital Archive is a repository for academic works produced by University of Maryland, Baltimore faculty, staff, and students. The archive especially seeks to preserve grey literature such as presentations and posters that may not otherwise be published or shared. You can search the archive for existing materials or submit your own work.

Data Repository Directories

Data Repositories by Subject
This list from the Open Access Directory allows you to browse data repositories by discipline, including medicine.
re3data.org
re3data.org is a registry of research data repositories. It is not a repository itself, but you can search it or browse by subject to find a data repository that matches your research needs.
Selected List of Repositories
Nature has compiled a list of recommended data repositories, as they require their authors to submit data along with their publications. The list can be browsed by subject area.

Selected Data Repositories

The following lists contain some selected open data repositories.

Government Data

Open Baltimore
Open data from the City of Baltimore
Maryland Open Data
Maryland's Open Data Portal
Data.gov
The home of the U.S. Government’s open data
Healthdata.gov
Open data from the US Department of Health and Human Services
Census Data
Open data from the US Census Bureau

Generalist Repositories

Dryad
Dryad is a repository for scientific and medical data. Payment is required to submit data but not to search for or use data already in the repository.
Figshare
Figshare is a general repository that allows you to upload and share any type of data in any file format. You can also search it to find existing materials. Up to 20 GB of storage is included in the free version.
Harvard Dataverse
Harvard Dataverse is a general data repository. You do not have to be affiliated with Harvard to create an account and submit data.
OSF
OSF is a collaborative, project management tool where you can store data and other components of your research. Login with your UMB credentials.
Zenodo
Zenodo is a repository based in the EU at CERN (home of the Large Hadron Collider), but accepts all research outputs from all disciplines and all users.

Domain-Specific Repositories

Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank
BMRB is a repository for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging data.
The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA)
TCIA is an archive of medical images relating to cancer. TCIA provides support for de-identification of the images as part of their submission process.
Coherent X-ray Imaging Data Bank
CXIDB is a repository for coherent x-ray imaging data.
ImmPort
ImmPort is a repository for data relating to bioinformatics in immunology.
OpenICPSR
A service of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), openICPSR is a self-publishing repository for social, behavioral, and health sciences research data.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a repository for neuroimaging data.
PhysioBank
PhysioBank is a collection of repositories for physiological data including recordings of waveform signals such as ECG.