Persistent publishing of data. My nations DataCite does not cover my field; alternatives?

Question

I want to make my geophysical dataset available for all humanity for all future. Until now, I'd put the data on our institutes' FTP server and write the link in the academic article I'm publishing. This is not optimal. Links may change, servers may disappear, universities may change names or decide to restructure everything, and if someone reads the article 10 years from now, there's a good chance the data won't be available at the same address. What I need is a permanent identifier for the dataset, like a DOI.

I've found DataCite, but the only DataCite member in my country is the Swedish National Data Service which deals with humanities, social sciences and health sciences. My geophysical dataset does not fit. Is there another alternative for persistently publishing my dataset? Either including hosting, or just a persistent link that redirects to a website, where I could update the redirect should the location of the data change for some reason.

What alternatives do I have for persistently publishing my data?

Answer 1

For either users or producers of open data, the Register for Research data Repositories (RE3) can be a useful resource. In their own words:

The goal of re3data.org is to create a global registry of research data repositories. The registry will cover research data repositories from different academic disciplines. re3data.org will present repositories for the permanent storage and access of data sets to researchers, funding bodies, publishers and scholarly institutions. In the course of this mission re3data.org aims to promote a culture of sharing, increased access and better visibility of research data.

Among other information, the registry specifies what repositories provide the ability to identify particular datasets through DOI, URN, or otherwise. It allows to search by discpline. For example, searching exclusively for open access atmospheric science repositories gets 37 results. Limiting it to those that have persistent identifiers reduces the number of results to 7, such as the World Data Center for Climate.

The registry aims at both producers and users of open data.

Answer 2

The University of Minnesota has a pretty good guide on the topic. In case of link rot, I've copied the summary:

Sharing your data and making it open available is easy. You can do any of the following:

• Deposit in an appropriate data repository or archive (see list below) (ie. Subject-based)
• Deposit to an institutional repository, like the UMN Digital Conservancy.
• Post online via a project or institutional web site, for example Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve.
• Submit data to a journal that support data supplements.
• Cite your data in your work so others can find and access it (via a permanent URL or DOI).

If you're attached to a university or similar, and they have an Intitutional Repository, you can talk to them to see if they'd accept data. (not all do, because of size consideratons, and not all can mint DOIs ... it'd be worth telling them about EZID) if they can't.)

If you don't have an IR (instutional repo.) or a discipline repository that will accept it, and you don't want to go the journal publishing route, you still have more options that will take it and assign an ID:

• Dryad will accept submissions, with a small fee attached. Most of their data is ecological & environmental in nature (they were built to support DataONE.
• FigShare will take data for free provided you make it available to the public.
• Zenodo will take data for free, under different licensing, and can be embargoed.

Answer 3

Try talking to archive.org. It doesn't seem like an ordinary person can upload into the dataset collection, but they might be able to arrange something; this feels to me like the right place to put it.

Answer 4

In addition to re3data, try Databib. Check with the librarian at your institution who is specifically assigned to your department also.