PsychData: Trusted Data Repository of Research in Psychological Science

PsychData is a sustainable repository for primary (digital) research data from all fields of Psychology. It was created in 2003 with financial aid from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and was accredited in 2010 by the German Data Forum (RatSWD). Key features of PsychData are sustainability (no proprietary data or metadata formats, adherence to standards), selection based on quality (only studies with associated peer reviewed publications are accepted), extensive curation (long-term interpretability of data is assured), and security (de-posit or download require contracts). By late 2017 PsychData contained 163 data sets from 54 studies (> 36 million data points). The data collections include longitudinal as well as cross-sectional data, standardization samples for psychological inventories, interview studies, experiments, interdisciplinary studies and more. Although the service has been available for more than a decade it’s impact on the data sharing culture in Psychology has been limited. One could argue that the high hurdles required by PsychData on researchers hinder its broad usage. However, years of interaction with psychologists have brought forward other reasons for the reluctance to archive and share data: There is a lack of knowledge about data management, it is perceived to be too much work with too little benefit, and the fear of loss of control over one’s own data is a big concern. ZPID is working in two areas to overcome these barriers. For one, it created DataWiz, an ex-pert system that guides researchers through the entire process of data management. Secondly, ZPID is currently integrating different types of open science practices into one seamless ser-vice portfolio supporting the entire research cycle: Information, planning, collecting, analyzing, archiving and publishing will be interconnected parts of ZPID’s research support. Thus, data sharing will become a natural part of conducting psychological research. peerReviewed