When thinking about how researchers at Stanford might want to use the Stanford Digital Repository to support their work, probably the first scenario we envisioned was for publication support. And apparently we weren't the only ones.

Even before we started advertising the availability of the SDR for research data, Hatef Monajemi, a graduate student in the statistics department, came to us with just the problem we had envisioned.

He was working with his research advisor, Professor David Donoho, on a paper for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The journal required that they make the supporting data available to readers, but they did not provide a place for them to put this data. And so he went looking for a home for his data, found the SDR, and introduced to Prof. Donoho the idea of taking advantage of this local resource.

The SDR is a great place for permanent storage of supplemental data, and it's perfect for sharing as well. When you are still in the process of writing your paper, you can create a persistent URL (PURL) where you intend to upload the data later. That PURL can then be included in the submitted paper. While the reviewing and finalizing of galley proofs is underway, you can come back and deposit the data and have the PURL ready to release when the paper is published.

Having that permanent home for your data will keep you from running into problems with dead links, like Malin Pinsky did (read that story here)!

The first PURL we published for research data was this PURL for Professor Donoho, generated through the joint effort of another of Prof. Dohono's graduate students, Matan Gavish, and library staff. Prof. Donoho was so pleased with this service that he recently came back to us to create another PURL for his next PNAS paper. Because of improvements in our self-deposit web interface in the interim, he and Matan were able to generate this second PURL all on their own.

The next time you publish a paper and have some data that needs a permanent home, contact us at sdr-contact@lists.stanford.edu!