FAQs

• Q: What is a Dataverse Collection?

  A Having a Dataverse collection allows you to share, organize and archive your data, while also being able to display it on your site. It ensures that you receive credit for your data through formal scholarly data citations and helps satisfy data sharing requirements from funders and publishers. You also have full control of your datasets, from who you share your data with and when to publish. Your web visibility is also increased since it is searchable alongside other scholars’ research data.

• Q: Can I upload any type of data file to the Harvard Dataverse?

  A Yes, any file format is accepted. Some formats (RData, SPSS, STATA, CSV, xlsx, FITS) are processed to access their metadata and thus be able to provide more features for these type of files (such as file metadata search and re-formatting)

• Q: Is there a maximum size per file?

  A Yes, 2GB. But you can upload as many files as you want to a dataset.

• Q: What is the difference between a Dataverse and a Dataset?

  A A Dataverse is a container for your Datasets. We recommend you first create a Dataverse and then add Datasets to that Dataverse. The Dataverse can be for an individual researcher, for a research group, for an entire department, for a journal, etc.

• Q: What do I need to get started?

  A Not much. Go to {site.dataverse_url}, create an account and click Add Data to either create a Dataverse or add Datasets to an existing Dataverse.

• Q: What information is needed to add a Dataset?

  A At a minimum you need a title for the Dataset, the authors or data collectors, and a description about the data. If you have more information about your data, you can fill in other metadata fields. Also, you can upload documentation files and code files to accompany your data files. We recommend you to have all the files ready, in common formats used in your field, before you start adding a dataset.

• Q: Do I need to make the files public?

  A No. When you publish a Dataset to a Dataverse, you need to make the title, description and data citation (generated automatically by the system), and any other metadata that describes the Dataset, public. However, it is possible to restrict the files individually, and decide who you want to grant permissions to access the data files. As part of this program, we strongly encourage that you make all your data files public, unless there are privacy concerns which require the data to be restricted.