Share and preserve your qualitative research data

February 19, 2021

Researchers at the University of Michigan have a new option for sharing and preserving qualitative and mixed-methods research data — the Qualitative Data Repository (QDR).

Use the QDR archive to store, share, and discover a wide range of digital data and accompanying documentation generated or collected through qualitative and mixed-method research in the social sciences.

“By sharing your data, you’ll get more citations to your work and greater recognition of your work. And many grants, especially federal grants, now require that data be shared,” says Karen Downing, education librarian at U-M Library. “The really great thing about QDR is that it has staff that are dedicated to helping you prepare your data to be deposited. You’re not on your own to figure out de-identification, data description, and security levels.”

If you’re a researcher ready to deposit your qualitative data, visit QDR, or contact Karen Downing at kdown@umich.edu.

For sharing and preserving other research output, including data, use U-M’s institutional repository, Deep Blue, which houses documents, videos, digital research data, and more.  

QDR is available via the U-M Library's licensed institutional membership. It’s supported by the National Science Foundation, and hosted by the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry, a unit of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.