Curation and Preservation Services


QDR offers a broad range of services to help depositors render their data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR). QDR’s staff are familiar with and alert to the special considerations that must be taken into account with sensitive data, and we help depositors to share their data files ethically and legally.

More specifically, QDR offers the following curation services for each data project deposited with QDR:

  1. During initial consultation and appraisal, which may involve one or more phone/Skype conversations, QDR discusses project content and organization with depositors.

  2. Upon receipt of the data, QDR stores all files in their original form for preservation and then performs the following tasks on data files.

    • File integrity checks to assure that all files can be opened correctly.

    • File format conversion to data formats suitable for long-term preservation.

    • File naming to enhance uniformity and organization.

    • Copyright review to help depositors to assess whether files may violate applicable copyright terms or licenses and to develop solutions to allow publishing as much data as legally possible.

    • Disclosure risk evaluation assistance (when sensitive materials are in languages spoken by a QDR staff member) to help depositors to identify and execute a strategy to address disclosure risk. For depositors whose materials are in other languages, QDR conveys repository best practices. For all data projects, the responsibility for possible disclosure remains with the depositor.

  3. Curation also entails QDR helping depositors to provide the full context of their data, aiding them in filling gaps in documentation, and identifying additional files to include as documentation, such as data management plans, de-identification protocols, or informed consent scripts.

  4. QDR publishes data projects (including data and documentation) at data.qdr.syr.edu.

    • Published data projects are assigned digital object identifiers (DOIs) that serve as permanent links and allow for reliable citation to the data.

    • QDR also provides a sample citation, as well as export formats for reference managers (RIS, BibTeX, EndNote XML), which facilitate citation.

  5. After publication, QDR tracks re-use of data published on QDR. When data are reused, a full citation to the publication that drew on them is added to the landing page of the relevant data project, and the metadata records for the project are updated to ensure that reuse is captured in citation metrics such as Make Data Count.