American Educational Research Association Data Repository

Depositing Data with openICPSR to fulfill the American Educational Research Association's Archiving and Replication Requirements

Sharing data and procedures at the publication stage enhances the value of publication for authors and users. In keeping with the American Educational Research Association's proposed data sharing and archiving policies, AERA Open requires authors to deposit data and other study materials with the openICPSR repository. This allows other researchers to replicate analyses in a published article without having to request any additional information from the author, while at the same time enhances the credit afforded to authors for data and related materials they produced as part of a research work.

The openICPSR repository automatically generates a citation when the data are "published" in openICPSR. Authors are required to include this citation pointing to the data in the reference section of the final version of the article sent to the AERA Open editors. At the same time, all publications in any AERA (and, we hope other) journals using or referring to these data will be required to include a citation to them in their own bibliographies. This enables authors to be credited, through citations, for the data that they create.

Deposits should include all data, annotated program code, command files, and documentation that are needed to replicate the findings from an AERA Open article. For guidelines on options for different kinds of data, see Archiving of Article-related Data. For general instructions for depositing data, see Instructions for Depositing Data. For a discussion of best practice in preparing data for sharing, please refer to ICPSR's Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving, 5th Edition.

ICPSR's Role

ICPSR does not approve or alter datasets deposited in openICPSR in any way. Data are distributed in the same condition and format submitted by the depositor. Data approved for public use are distributed at no cost to users. ICPSR may charge a fee for the costs of managing data that have been restricted to protect confidential information about research subjects.

Confidentiality and Copyright

Investigators submitting data to ICPSR are entirely responsible for ensuring the confidentiality of research subjects. The presence of identifiable or sensitive information must be indicated during the submission process. ICPSR does not review submissions for disclosure risk. Investigators are also required to affirm that they have the right to publish this material. ICPSR requires a license for distribution of data, but copyright remains with the author.