Library Policies

Research Data Deposit & Publication Guidelines

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1. Introduction and Purpose

Scholarship@Miami is the institutional repository and research information management system managed by the University of Miami Libraries. Scholarship@Miami features selected research and scholarly works created by faculty, students, and staff of the University of Miami. Items in Scholarship@Miami include published peer-reviewed articles, theses and dissertations, datasets, conference papers, proceedings, lectures, projects, reports, presentations, performances, and other scholarly work and research output. Works published in Scholarship@Miami are immediately accessible worldwide unless designated as restricted or embargoed.

University of Miami affiliated faculty, staff, and students looking to publish their Research Data and code, whether to meet funder data sharing mandates or to contribute to the Open Science and Open Research movements, may consider Scholarship@Miami as an option for publishing their Research Data. However, Scholarship@Miami encourages the UM research community to seek disciplinary and other generalist data repositories, before considering publishing in Scholarship@Miami. For more information on locating an appropriate Research Data repository to share your Research Data, please email researchdata@miami.edu.

Researchers who publish their Research Data in a repository other than Scholarship@Miami can email researchdata@miami.edu to request a metadata record in Scholarship@Miami with an explicit relationship to the external data publication to increase discoverability.

2. Definitions

2.1 Data Creators

refers to the people responsible for the creation and stewardship of the Research Data. The Data Creator is often the Principal Investigator on the research project.

2.2 Data Curators

refers to the librarians responsible for the review of the Research Data Deposit and the management of the Research Data Publications in the Scholarship@Miami repository.

2.3 Data Package

refers to the collection of Research Data and Metadata.

2.4 Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

refers to a persistent identifier that is human and machine-readable and provides a mechanism to locate a digital object, such as a Research Data Publication, on the internet (world wide web).

2.5 Metadata

refers to structured and unstructured descriptive information about the Research Data.

2.6 Research Data

in this document refers to information recorded and/or collected for research performed at or under the auspices of the University of Miami regardless of the form or the media upon which it is recorded. This term includes, but is not limited to, computer programs (code and documentation), computer databases, instrumental outputs, raw numerical results, photographs, digital images, films, protocols, graphs, and other deliverables or data related supplemental materials produced under sponsored agreements.

2.7 Research Data Deposit

refers to the Data Package while it is in the review process prior to its publication in Scholarship@Miami.

2.8 Research Data Publication

refers to the Research Data Deposit once it is published in Scholarship@Miami.

3. Scope and Eligibility

3.1 Who Can Submit a Research Data Deposit for Publication

Anyone with a direct research affiliation with the University of Miami can publish Research Data with Scholarship@Miami. This includes faculty, staff, and students. Staff and students are required to contact repository.library@miami.edu and obtain authorization before submitting a Research Data Deposit.

3.2 Research Data that is Accepted

Scholarship@Miami accepts Research Data from all disciplines. Scholarship@Miami reserves the right to review the Research Data Deposit before publishing the Research Data in Scholarship@Miami. For more information on the types of data and file formats that are accepted into Scholarship@Miami, please see section 2. Definitions and section 4.3 File Formats and Standards.

3.2.i Code and Software

Data Creators can publish code as part of a Data Package with Scholarship@Miami. If you want to publish code with no accompanying Research Data, we encourage you to use a code-sharing repository. For example, researchers can use GitHub to publish their code and obtain a DOI through the GitHub-Zenodo integration. Any externally published code that is related to a Research Data Publication in Scholarship@Miami can be linked with DOIs minted with explicit relationships to connect the code and data publications.

3.3 Research Data that is Not Accepted

There is some Research Data that Scholarship@Miami cannot accept. If your submission contains data that meets any of the below conditions, please contact repository.library@miami.edu for recommendations of other repositories where you can publish your Research Data.

Scholarship@Miami cannot accept Research Data that:

• Violates the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
• Violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
• Violates the University of Miami Policy on Inventions, Intellectual Property, and Technology Transfer.
• Violates the University of Miami’s Export Control Policy or does not adhere to the University of Miami’s Guidance Regarding Foreign Influence in University Research.
• Violates sponsor mandates and agreements.
• Contains human subject data that has not been de-identified and could lead to direct or indirect identification.
• Contains de-identified human subject data that has not obtained informed consent or Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval.
• Contains licensed or copyrighted materials without permission from the license and/or copyright holder.

It is the responsibility of the Data Creator to ensure that they are not submitting any Research Data as outlined in this section and in the Data Deposit Agreement (see 4.1 Research Data Deposit Agreement).

3.3.i Restricted Access Data

Scholarship@Miami does not accept data that cannot be shared openly. If you need to publish data via a restricted access process, please contact repository.library@miami.edu for recommendations of other repositories that can publish data with restricted access limitations.

4. Research Data Deposit Requirements and Process

4.1 Research Data Deposit Agreement

The Data Creator must agree to the Data Deposit Agreement before Research Data can be published in Scholarship@Miami.

4.2 Data Size Limits

Scholarship@Miami can accept Research Data Deposits up to 3 GB in size. When using the Research Data Deposit Form in Scholarship@Miami, there is a maximum file upload size of 500 MB. If the Data Creator would like to publish data larger than 3 GB or 500 MB per file, please contact repository.library@miami.edu to learn about other options for publication and preservation of large data.

4.3 File Formats and Standards

Scholarship@Miami can accept all file types but encourages Data Creators to submit Research Data files in an open, non-proprietary file format (i.e. TXT, CSV). Using open, non-proprietary file formats are aligned with best practices and can help with the long-term preservation of the Research Data.

4.4 Documentation Requirements

Data publications in Scholarship@Miami should meet the basic requirement that a colleague in your discipline can re-use the published materials and data without contacting the principal Data Creator for clarification (apart from licensing agreements). To help meet this requirement, each Research Data Publication in Scholarship@Miami must include a README file. A README file is a plain text file that contains descriptive information about the Research Data. When you start the publication process through the submission form, a draft README is automatically generated and can be refined with the format of the University of Miami Libraries’ README Template.

If the Research Data includes data in a table form with rows and columns, Scholarship@Miami requires that Data Packages have a data dictionary that describes the contents of the columns. If the Data Package is not in the above format, it is recommended to provide a codebook or data dictionary.

If software or code is part of your Data Package, Scholarship@Miami requires that all code dependencies are listed and that the code is documented sufficiently for reuse by a colleague in the relevant discipline without contacting the author.

4.5 Data Licensing

Scholarship@Miami requires that Research Data is published with a license. It is important to assign a license as this provides clear information on limitations and requirements of use to people who download the Research Data for reuse. The license will let the researcher who wants to use the Research Data Publication know what they can do with the Research Data and encourage proper attribution.

The Data Creator can make the decision on which license they would like to assign to the Research Data Publication. Scholarship@Miami recommends using the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By). This license allows re-use with the requirement that the data must be properly attributed to the Data Creators.

4.6 Data Curation

Scholarship@Miami uses a mediated publication workflow to curate the Research Data Deposit. The curation process consists of an initial review and feedback period, where the Data Curators work with the Data Creator to make their Research Data Deposit align with the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and CARE (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, and Ethics) principles. The data curation process can range from one week to over one month. Please plan accordingly when submitting a Data Package to Scholarship@Miami so that your Research Data Deposit has adequate time to be reviewed by the Data Curators.

4.6.i Data Curation Activities

The Data Curators follow the standardized CURATE(D) steps created by the Data Curation Network (DCN). These steps consist of the following activities:

• Check files/code and read documentation (risk mitigation, file inventory, appraisal/selection).
• Understand the data (run files/code, QA/QC issues, READMEs)
• Request missing information or changes (tracking provenance of any changes and why)
• Augment Metadata for findability (minting Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), Metadata standards, discoverability)
• Transform file formats for reuse (data preservation, conversion tools, data visualization)
• Evaluate for FAIRness (transparent usage licenses, responsibility standards, metrics for tracking use)
• (D)ocument all curation activities throughout the process

4.6.ii Persistent Identifiers

All Research Data Publications in Scholarship@Miami are given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). The DOI allows Scholarship@Miami to correctly attribute the Research Data to the Data Creators through an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID), and to create explicit relationships with other relevant publications like the article that the Research Data supports, and sources from which the Research Data is derived (if relevant).

The University of Miami encourages researchers to obtain an ORCID, a persistent identifier for researchers. ORCID identifiers facilitate reliable attribution of researchers to their research output. If you do not have an ORCID iD, you can visit their website to create your identifier. Once you have an ORCID iD you can define an explicit affiliation between your ORCID iD and the University of Miami. If you have not yet connected your ORCID iD with the University of Miami institutional repository Scholarship@Miami, you can use the University of Miami Libraries’ tool to Connect your ORCID iD.

5. Costs and Fees

Scholarship@Miami does not charge for publishing Research Data if the Research Data is within the data size limits described in section 3.2 Data Size Limits.

6. Data Retention

Your Research Data Publications will be maintained for at least five years after publication. Scholarship@Miami reserves the right to assess the retention of Research Data Publications five years after publication.

Research Data Publications will be assessed for retention based on citation, download and usage metrics over the past 5 years. If the Research Data Publication is deemed low use, Scholarship@Miami reserves the right to sunset the Data Publication by deleting the data files and leaving the landing page with the citation information (a tombstone page) and the Data Creators will be notified as possible.

If a Data Creator has received sponsor funding and is using Scholarship@Miami to publish their Research Data, it is the responsibility of the Data Creator to comply with the planned length of availability outlined in their Data Management and Sharing Plan (DMSP) or as required by the funding agency, and to preserve all of the relevant Research Data for the agreed upon length of time. Publishing in Scholarship@Miami does not absolve the Data Creator from this responsibility.

If a Data Creator needs longer than 5 years to comply with their DMSP, please express this to the Data Curators when submitting the Research Data Deposit.

Scholarship@Miami is intended to be maintained for the foreseeable future. In case of the closure of Scholarship@Miami, all reasonable efforts will be made to integrate all content into the platform that will replace Scholarship@Miami.

6.1 Retention of Unpublished (Draft) Items

If a Research Data Deposit is identified as needing additional edits by the Data Curators and the Data Creator does not address the edits for a period of 6 months, the Research Data Deposit may be deleted by the Repository Administrators. Research Data Deposits that are initiated but not completed within 6 months may be deleted. Deletion will not take place without first contacting the Research Creator; if there is no response within 30 days of notifying the Research Creator, Research Data Deposits may be deleted.

7. Data Updates, Versioning, and Withdrawal

7.1 Updates and Versioning

Data Creators who need to update their Research Data Publication can do so by emailing repository.library@miami.edu. If the Data Creator has a new version of the Research Data Publication, the previous version of the Research Data will be preserved. Depending on the changes to the Research Data, either the new version will be added to the Scholarship@Miami landing page, or a new landing page will be created for the updated version. If a new landing page is created, the old version and the new version of the Research Data will be linked together through their respective DOIs.

7.2 Withdrawal and Takedown

As Scholarship@Miami is intended to be a permanent scholarly record, removing content from public view is strongly discouraged. There may be times, however, when it is necessary for Data Creators or the Scholarship@Miami administrators to remove or update content. Under most circumstances, a tombstone page (a citation for the removed content) will remain. If it is deemed necessary by the Scholarship@Miami administrators to remove content, the Data Creators will be notified. Data Creators wishing to remove or update their content should contact the Scholarship@Miami administrators at repository.library@miami.edu.

If there are any charges or allegations of misconduct, the files and metadata will be retained but suppressed from public access until all charges are fully resolved.

8. Support and Contact Information

If you have any questions about these guidelines, or how to publish Research Data with Scholarship@Miami, please contact repository.library@miami.edu.

Research Data Publication Guidelines – As of 07/28/2026