A simple and effective way to share your research materials is to publish them in a repository. A repository is a storage facility (often also a preservation and curation facility) where users can upload and download their data, make it accessible and discoverable, all in an effort to fulfill grant requirements and/or support the free sharing of scholarly knowledge. Materials that are deposited into a repository should be:
- Publication-ready, or data not likely to be modified
- Searchable and browesable
- Retrieved or downloaded easily
- Citeable
- Well-documented, to facilitate understanding and re-use
A wide variety of institution-based and discipline-specific repositories exist for researchers to choose from. The repository itself should be:
- Appropriate for the type of data you generate
- Appropriate for the audience of the repository (so they will make use of your data!)
- Open access
Below are links to WyoScholar, the University of Wyoming institutional Repository, as well as popular, public data repositories. The Libraries also has information on finding data in repositories for re-use and how to properly cite data in your work.