Deposit data into a University repository

The University of Leeds offers two repositories for your research data: Research Data Leeds and Restricted Access Data Repository (RADAR). 

Our repositories offer long term, archival storage. Data will be retained for a minimum of 10 years; data of long-term value may be retained indefinitely. 

Which repository is suitable for your work depends on whether a funding body is involved and if your data has any sensitivity requirements. 

You may use both of the repositories together, using Research Data Leeds to share some research outputs openly, and restricting other outputs in RADAR.

A data management plan (DMP) will help you to plan and identify any potential issues during data collection and help you to share it safely at the end of your project. 

Research Data Leeds 

The Research Data Leeds Repository is the institutional research data repository for the University of Leeds. The service aims to facilitate data discovery and data sharing. 

You should use this service if your research is funded by any of the UK Research Councils, Wellcome Trust, CRUK or Horizon 2020, and they have not specified another repository. 

Research Data Leeds will help to make your research data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable under the FAIR principles. 

This repository is for open data, this can be defined as: 

• Data that can be made fully open due to no degree of sensitivity involved.  
• In the case of human derived data, the risk of re-identification is considered extremely low or participants have given permission for their identifiable data to be shared. 

Restricted Access Data Repository (RADAR) 

The Restricted Access Data Repository is a companion service to the Research Data Leeds repository. You can use RADAR to provide controlled access to data that cannot be made fully open, for example human-derived data or commercially sensitive data. 

This repository is for data classified as restricted or controlled. 

Restricted data can be defined as: 

• Data that can’t be made fully open due to some degree of sensitivity involved, including qualitative data, the inclusion of third-party material or a commercial aspect to the data and issues with consent – for example participants were not fully informed what would happen to their data at the end of the project or consent was given for a particular form of sharing, eg for research purposes only, with project partners only. 
• In the case of human derived data – risk of re-identification is considered to be low.

Not all of these specific sensitivities need to be in place for the dataset to be classified as restricted. The Libraries Research Data Service would discuss this with the depositing researcher. 

Controlled data fits the above description of restricted data, but with the addition of one or more of these criteria:

• a sensitive topic area 
• contains special category data 
• a small sample size 
• block ethics approval was used rather than individual ethics approval. 

Not all of these specific sensitivities are needed for the dataset to be classified as controlled. The Libraries Research Data Service will discuss this with the depositing researcher. 

Any requests for depositing controlled data will be escalated to the Data Access and Retention Group (DARG).  

To share these types of data openly, it is important to have appropriate agreements with commercial partners, or explicit consent from your research participants. 

Email us at [email protected] to find out more about RADAR and how to use it for your project.