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.

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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.

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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.

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 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.

Adding Metadata for a Dataset

 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.

Please complete the form before uploading the data file(s).

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.