Use cases · Institutions · Worked scenario
Harvard Dataverse as an institutional data repository
This hypothetical use case highlights how institutions benefit by using Harvard Dataverse as their institutional data repository.
Use case date: March 15, 2024
Use case contact: Gustavo Durand, support@dataverse.harvard.edu
Background
A research university wants to provide a place where their researchers can preserve and share their data. However they do not have the technical staff and infrastructure to stand up their own repository.
The researchers at the university require a repository that supports the FAIR principles. They would like to empower the consumers of their research outputs to further explore and visualize the data. Additionally, they would like to be able to login through their University SSO.
The university needs the ability to preserve research outputs and control who can deposit and access data in the IR. They would also like to connect to tools that can assist in curating the metadata and enabling large data uploads. Additionally, they want to provide usage metrics, such as the number of citations and downloads.
Use case
In order to satisfy the requirements of the researchers and the university, the university opts to create a dataverse collection hierarchy at Harvard Dataverse.
Harvard Dataverse plays a crucial infrastructure role by offering a data sharing solution that does not require local technology resources. It manages integration with DataCite to register DOIs for datasets and files, maintains authentication through the institution's SSO service, provides curation services and support for big data, and allows IR researchers to customize their collection pages. Furthermore, it ensures the quality and preservation of data, code, and metadata published in the IR and tracks data usage.
Via Harvard Dataverse's robust permission system, the university can control who has access to deposit in which subcollections and who can access which research objects (or allow the researchers to determine that access).
Harvard Dataverse also provides researchers built in connections to several other tools - from Turbo Curator from ICPSR to assist in AI powered data curation to Data Explorer from Borealis in order to better understand the data, among an ever growing inventory of external tools.
GREI Use Cases are supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Data Science Strategy / Office of the NIH Director pursuant to OTA-21-009, "Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI)".
Header image: NIH Image Gallery. GDF10 protein forms new brain cell connections (https://www.flickr.com/photos/nihgov/22798807131/). Courtesy of S. Thomas Carmichael, MD, PhD, David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles. NIH funding: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). More information at https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/scientists-identify-main-component-brain-repair-after-stroke