Introduction: The distribution of research data across a wide range of repositories can make accessibility a complex issue. Difficulties can range from ownership of data and intellectual property to security and maintenance of the data. This becomes a greater challenge since hosting collections of large datasets is often a significant financial burden. The Wyoming Data Repository meets this long-standing need from Researchers at the University of Wyoming and around the state. This service provides a consolidated repository for research datasets produced by UW and potentially other state entities. In addition, it provides ongoing support from qualified curators at the UW Libraries Digital Collections Office and technical support from experienced professionals at UW's Advanced Research Computing Center. The repository is hosted on-premise in a cost-effective, sustainable manner, within UW ARCC's advanced infrastructure. Support, collaboration and buy-in from all entities associated with the project ensure that data placed in the repository is well maintained, more easily searchable and highly available. This workshop covers, signing up, logging in, and uploading a dataset to The Wyoming Data Repository.

What is Dataverse?

The Wyoming Data Repository is powered by the Dataverse Project. The Dataverse Project is different than what many may know the term Dataverse as the Microsoft product. Dataverse is an open source web application to share, preserve, cite, explore, and analyze research data. It facilitates making data available to others, and allows you to replicate others' work more easily. Researchers, journals, data authors, publishers, data distributors, and affiliated institutions all receive academic credit and web visibility.

A Dataverse repository is the software platform, which hosts multiple virtual data archives. Each of these archives contains a collection, a collection contains datasets, and each dataset contains descriptive metadata and data files. However, these archives are referred to within the Dataverse ecosystem as a “dataverse” and each dataverse can contain multiple sub-dataverses. For the sake of clarity, we will only refer to the “University of Wyoming Dataverse Collection” throughout the rest of the tutorial and if there is any interest in creating a separate dataverse or sub-dataverse please contact wyodata@uwyo.edu to consult with the UW-libraries on the best path forward.

Signing Up

In order to use the Wyoming Data Repository, researchers must first sign up. All University of Wyoming users (students, faculty, and staff) are eligible to submit datasets to the Wyoming Data Repository. The UW Libraries and ARCC will review all requests and will endeavor to publish submissions within five (5) business days. In some cases we will have questions about your dataset that need to be clarified before publication. If you have a tight deadline for a dataset, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to meet that deadline without reasonable notice. Please plan ahead!

In order to sign up, please navigate to the Wyoming Data Repository website at https://dataverse.arcc.uwyo.edu and click on the “Sign Up” link on the top menu bar.

This takes you to a form on the ARCC Service Portal where you will need to enter some information for your account creation. This includes name, email, institution affiliation, college/department, suggested name of a Dataverse Collection, and additional information.

Once you add the required information, ARCC and the Libraries will receive the request for review and create the account. You will be notified as an emailed reply to the request.

Logging In

Once you get the confirmation of the account creation, it is now possible to login to the Wyoming Data Repository. To do this, you will need to click on the “Log In” link on the top menu bar.

This then takes you to a page that asks how you would like to login, whether within the university of Wyoming or by username and email. This is a default setting on the Dataverse Project, ALL accounts that have been created should use the University of Wyoming button.

This takes you to the ARCC login page where you can enter your username and password that you signed up with.

When you log in for the first time, click on your user account (in red text, upper right corner), then go to “Account Information.” From there, click on the “Send Verification Email” button. You will receive a verification email from wyodata@uwyo.edu asking you to verify your email address. Check your clutter and spam folders if you don’t receive that verification email. Click the link when you receive the email within 24 hours.

You can confirm that you have logged in by looking at the far right of top menu bar, where your name should be displayed.

Adding a Dataset

Once logged in, you can add a dataset that you would like published by clicking the “Add Data” button. The button has a drop down to add a new Dataverse or new Dataset.

If you think you need a new Dataverse, please contact wyodata@uwyo.edu to consult with the UW-libraries, if you are just adding a new Dataset, please proceed with the following steps.

1. Click on the “University of Wyoming Dataverse Collection” logo near the center left.

2. Click on the “Add Data” button on the right and select “New Dataset”.

3. Begin to add the metadata for the dataset.

Adding Metadata for a Dataset

The first step is to

 When adding a new Dataset, there will be some required metadata (Information about the Dataset to be published) that will need to be added in a form before the dataset can be published. Some of the required Metadata will be pre-populated based on your account/login information. The remaining required metadata will be marked with asterisks.

Basic citation metadata instructions 

• Keep in mind that this basic citation metadata is how your data will be cited in research literature and it is how it will be discovered & indexed on the web.  The more specific it is, the better (the opposite is also true!).   

• Unless you have been granted authorization to create a new Dataverse Collection, the “Host Dataverse” will be “University of Wyoming Dataverse Collection.”   

• Title field:
  Enter a title that is actually useful to a person who is not familiar with your data.  If it is replication data, you may use the “Add Replication Data for” button and enter the title of your associated article/study. 

• Author field:
  Enter your name (Lastname, Firstname) and affiliation.  We *require* that you add an ORCID Identifier Type and Identifier (which is a 16 digit string) to your author information.  If you don’t have an ORCID, sign up for one at https://orcid.org/  

  • If you have co-authors, enter additional authors by clicking on the “+” button to the right of that field. 

• Point of Contact field:
  This is how users will contact you if they have questions about your dataset.  We strongly suggest that you use your UW email and not a personal email.    

• Description field:
  Much like the title, the description should be populated with information that describes your data which will also be useful for someone who is not familiar with it. 

• Subject field:
  This is a controlled vocabulary with 14 different selections available.  Pick the one that most closely matches your data.  We will not add custom subject fields. 

• Keyword field:
  If you want to add keywords that will be associated with your dataset, add them in the ‘Term’ box.  This is a repeatable field. 

• Related Publication field:
  If you are publishing an article with which your data is associated, we highly recommend you enter that citation information here.  If you have a DOI for that publication, add the ID type (DOI) and enter the DOI string in the Identifier sub-field.  This will show up as a link to that publication on your dataset record.

Readme.txt instructions and template 

Getting Support

For support or any questions that you may have, please contact wyodata@uwyo.edu to consult with the UW-libraries for publishing related questions or ARCC at arcc-help@uwyo.edu for technical related questions.