Repositories of Research Data in Russia and Abroad

One of the effective tools for providing open access to academic research results are repositories of various types. The most common are thematic, national, research and institutional repositories that usually contain text materials: monographs, scientific publications, conference proceedings, etc. In addition to the types mentioned above, thematic and universal research data repositories have been actively developed abroad in recent years. Besides text information, they also include numerical, audiovisual data, datasets, models, computer codes, etc. In order to assess the current state of data repositories in our country, we have conducted a study of websites of scientific organizations of the three categories that were approved by the Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations, in accordance with the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of April 8, 2009 No. 312 “On the Assessment and Monitoring of the Effectiveness of Scientific Organizations Performing Research, Development and Technological Work for Civil Purposes” as well as of educational institutions that are participants of the program “Priority 2030”. This work has identified only three educational institution’s data repositories, the content of which is mostly closed for a remote user. Among scientific institutions, information on research data was found on 20 websites. However, most of this information is presented as a list of data, without providing search options by various attributes and managing their results. In the meantime, we have found successful examples of functioning of Russian data repositories that include unique collections of scientific research and provide open access to the research results. They provide extensive search features for a remote user: possibilities of applying logical operators and faceted navigation, as well as sorting of search results. It has been found out that national data repositories are practically not covered in international aggregators, and the existing information about them is often incorrect. This has a negative impact on the visibility of research results within the global scientific community. At the same time, placing research data in repositories and making data repositories available in international aggregators promote visibility, accessibility and rapid distribution of research results. This eliminates the need for re-collection of data and prevents duplication of works.