Share Data

Benefits of Depositing Data

One of the major goals of NACJD and its sponsors is to support the analysis of existing data. The criminal justice field as a whole benefits when professional researchers test each other's conclusions - verifying, refining or refuting original findings. This is one reason why the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) require that their grantees deposit data sponsored by these agencies with NACJD.

Sharing data also fosters the development and testing of new conclusions, as data collected for one purpose can be used to pursue inquiries not addressed by the original investigators. Indeed, depositing files produced from the analysis of existing data is also encouraged.

Archiving data affords multiple benefits to the investigator:

• The investigator's study is described on the NACJD website.
• NACJD distributes the data and supporting documentation to interested users, freeing investigators from using their own time and resources to do so and permitting other researchers to reanalyze the data.
• Once the data are archived and available, the investigator is no longer responsible for maintaining permanent backups of the data he or she collected.
• The investigator and his or her colleagues can assist each other in future research projects by sharing the archived data and documentation over a wide variety of computer platforms.

Preparing Research Files for Deposit

NACJD urges researchers to begin their archiving strategy as they begin their research. Deposit guidelines for agency-sponsored data are linked above. ICPSR, NACJD's parent organization, has also prepared valuable guidelines for data management.

NACJD encourages researchers to deposit computer-readable data for long-term preservation and ease in reusability by other social science researchers. The following information will assist in the preparation of data for deposit.

• Guidelines for OJP Analysts, Program Officers, and Contractors
• Data with Confidential Content
• Projects Analyzing Existing Data
• Updates to Previously Released Studies

NIJ Projects Archiving at Other Data Repositories

Some NIJ projects (e.g., forensic sciences projects) will be archiving at data repositories other than NACJD, according to their NIJ-approved Data Archiving Plan. These projects are only required to submit study-level information to NACJD, rather than datasets. Use the NIJ Projects Archiving at Other Data Repositories form to submit the following information:

• Study title
• Principal Investigator name(s) and affiliation(s)
• NIJ Grant Manager name
• NIJ Grant Manager email
• Name and URL for the website where the data will be posted and publicly available
• DOI if available
• Short summary of the study (5-6 sentences maximum)
• NIJ grant number
• Geographic coverage of the study (if applicable)
• Data collection time period
• Study time period (if different from data collection period)