Data Release

Data release is the practice of providing research data for use by people outside the research team. This process involves determining which pieces of information should be made available to which individuals in which circumstances, creating licenses and protocols that balance the need for privacy of human research subjects with the public good of data availability, and the creation of archives with those materials in place.

Read First

• Teams should make available all original data they obtain, whether directly collected or obtained from a partner organization, unless legal or privacy concerns prevent them from doing so
• Data release can come in various forms, including public access, restricted access, and licensed access
• Released data should be stripped of direct identifiers and subjected to statistical disclosure control for potential indirect identifiers
• Survey data and other primary data should be released once the data cleaning for each round of data collection is completed
• Derived and analysis datasets should be released as part of replication folders with publication of research products

Survey data release at DIME

DIME datasets are shared through the Microdata Catalog. After each round of data collection, clean datasets should be reviewed and submitted. See the Microdata Catalog Checklist for information on the format requirements and process for data submission. See DIME Datasets on Microdata Catalog for a list of currently available datasets.