Publishing on the WPRDC

We have developed a number of resources to provide information about data sharing and the publishing process through the Regional Data Center. Whether you’re one of our current publishers, or only thinking about sharing open data, there’s something here for you.

Get started as a Publisher

Public agencies, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions can share data through the Regional Data Center. Here’s what you need to know about the data sharing process and your responsibilities as a publisher. Convinced? Give us a call and we’ll get you started.

Legal Infrastructure

The Regional Data Center provides a legal framework enabling the University of Pittsburgh to operate a shared platform for open data. Learn more about the three main components of the Regional Data Center’s legal infrastructure that makes it easy for us to add new publishers.

Publisher FAQs

We know you have questions about the publishing process, are curious about the benefits of sharing data, and want to learn more about what data to share. Check out all of the answers in our publisher FAQs.

Training

As we expand the number of new publishers, we’ve developed a set of documentation hosted on GitHub to serve as a refresher and training resource for publishers. We welcome your corrections, comments, and suggestions.

• Getting started as a publisher: What you need to know.
• Establishing your publishing priorities: What should I share?
• Protecting privacy: How to identify and manage sensitive data and determine what not to share as open data.
• Preparing data for publication: getting everything in order before you publish.
• Metadata entry worksheet: Put the metadata details in place before you publish.
• Publishing a dataset and resources: How to put everything on the data portal.
• Writing a rich dataset description: A template and a framework for providing datasets with more contextual information.
• Data dictionaries: What are they, and how do I make them?