Data Repositories and User Preferences: A Survey of Researchers Submitting Phylogenies to Data Repositories
Shea Swauger · Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) · 2019
This study collected survey data from researchers that deposited phylogenetic data in the Dryad and TreeBASE data repositories in order to better understand the factors that most influence where researchers deposit their data. Respondents were asked to rank the relative importance of eight possible factors. I found that there were strong preferences within the larger sample of TreeBASE users, and that the rankings differed significantly between TreeBASE and Dryad users. On average, TreeBASE users ranked the specialization of the repository highest and Dryad users ranked as equally highest the trust in the persistence of the repository and the ease of the data submission process. Being directed to choose a repository by a journal policy had the greatest frequency of being ranked as the most important factor in both user groups, but had a bimodal ranking distribution. Some users reported depositing their data in multiple repositories and archiving their data voluntarily.