How do I share Open Data with others on this SE site?

Question

I have some data which is Open(free from copyright, patents or other control mechanisms) and I want to share it with the users here. How do I do it without having to host it on some other server and share a link here?

As links are destined to change at some point, I would like this community to provide an option to upload Open Data and make it available for everyone.

Not sure if this is the right way of pushing a request, I am also going to ask this question on Meta -Stack Overflow.

Also I would like to add that if this request is implemented, SE - Open Data community is going to be very famous soon. (The same way a programmer searches for programming related questions, people with interest in Open Data and sharing Open resources would love to use this platform)

Edit: Link to my question on Meta-SO: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/222407

Answer 1

We have recently created the OpenData StackExchange organization on datahub.io.

Welcome to the Datahub, the free, powerful data management platform from the Open Knowledge Foundation, based on the CKAN data management system.

The Datahub provides free access to many of CKAN's core features, letting you search for data, register published datasets, create and manage groups of datasets, and get updates from datasets and groups you're interested in. You can use the web interface or, if you are a programmer needing to connect the Datahub with another app, the CKAN API.

OpenData meta discussion

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Update 2017: I've learned that there is a 100MB limit per file (see answer), and there is an open question about how to host larger files.

Answer 2

GitHub has all the things, seriously, it rules. OKFN hosts open data there. So do I. As do most Code for America brigades. But you can also get a free datahub.io account, at least for an organization and you can upload there.

You should also check out your area. Here in Virginia, there is an OpenVA data portal, and anyone can upload related data after signing up. Google your area and see if there are any municipal portals you can hit up.

EDIT: adding more options.

check out dat data, i have considered it on numerous occasions, and i may just use it personally so i get to play with it.
http://dat-data.com/

and http://datahub.io
which was built by okfn, and runs off ckan...

you could really get wild with free third party services: you could put them in dropbox, g drive, heroku, etc. you can also get a "free" account with amazon, not sure if its aws or as3; i do know that even though it's "free", it requires a credit card, and then i stopped filling out the application. :)
anything that gives you storage and url(s).

but then you are giving up ownership of that data. @ least to some extent. oh and now they have the data too. not like i pulled a copy of that repo, like, hey we can just walk in the front door and do whatever we want, whenever we want.

Answer 3

Try finding a stable data repository that can be a permanent home for the data. Two of the best places to look for such a home are DataBib and re3data.

If you are affiliated with a college or university whose library maintains an institutional repository, that may also be a good place to stash the data for the long term.

This answer assumes that the data are stable (or at least snapshottable).

Answer 4

It's possible that the answer to this question might revolve around the nature of the data. Although the data itself may be intended to be ephemeral in the case of something like 'how do I clean this up?' questions, we need the bad data to persist as it's so tightly coupled to the question, and we want the question to persist. As such, I would not suggest services like PasteBin.

We're starting to get new services popping up that will take in datasets no matter the discipline:

• FigShare is free for open data. If you want to post restricted data, then to pay depending on the size.

• Zenodo allows up to 2GB files and different licenses for the data, but I don't know if they have all of their cost model stuff ironed out quite yet. (it's CERN funded, so I suspect it will persist)

It's likely that there are other groups out there popping up; some folks might use Drop Box and such, and it's possible that someone might end up with a sort of 'slideshare for tabular data' to allow someone to more easily skim through data that's been uploaded without the need to download the file ... but I don't think we're quite there yet.

(does the first paragraph show that I was just on a panel discussing data citation this morning?)