Archiving research data

Abstract

Data collection is essential to the great majority of research projects in linguistics, but sadly many fail to seek advice on what to do with the data when the project ends. This might lead to poor structuring or failure to safely store the data, which in the worst case ends up with valuable data being forgotten about, not reusable, or lost. In this chapter, I discuss how linguists can proceed in archiving their data, including how to select a data repository that ensures optimal conditions for preservation, retrieval, and visibility. I also discuss potential benefits of archiving as well as some key barriers to data sharing. Although the focus of the chapter is on archiving open data, the large majority of advice also holds for data with restricted access.