The Dataverse Network Project

Via web application software, data citation standards, and statistical methods, the Dataverse Network project increases scholarly recognition and distributed control for authors, journals, archives, teachers, and others who produce or organize data; facilitates data access and analysis for researchers and students; and ensures long-term preservation whether or not the data are in the public domain.

  • Website view of Dataverse Network Project
  • Pedagodic view of Dataverse Network Project
  • View of a specific dataverse
  • Network view of a DVN
  • Installation view of DVN
  • It's a web application that serves out individual 'dataverses' to scholars, research groups, journals, presses, scholarly organizations, departments, libraries, universities, and archives.
  • Developed at Harvard University by the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Several institutions -- including IQSS -- maintain permanent archives and run the necessary software and servers.
  • Open-source, free, and easy to use. You do not need to install it to make your own dataverse.

How does it work?

Dataverse Networks involve installations of our open source, web-application software hosted at major institutions. Individual dataverses are self-contained virtual data archives, which are served by a Dataverse Network, and appear on the web sites of authors, teachers, journals, granting agencies, research centers, departments, and others. Dataverses are branded in the style of their virtual host, but are easy to set up, require no local software installations, and still offer all the services of a modern archive controlled by the dataverse owner. For example, click Dataverse at this homepage or Find Data at this archive. Each dataverse is styled like the rest of the site, but its URL is different, indicating that the page is served from elsewhere and so required no local installations. These and many other dataverses are served by the same Dataverse Network at IQSS, where you also can get your own dataverse. The extensive digital library services of each dataverse include data archiving, preservation formatting, cataloging, data citation, searching, conversion, subsetting, online statistical analysis, and dissemination. Each dataverse presents a hierarchical organization of data sets, which might include only studies produced by the dataverse creator (such as for an author or research project), those associated with published work (such as replication data sets for journal articles), or data sets collected for a particular community (such as for a journal's replication archive, or a college class or subfield). Learn more: Gary King. "An Introduction to the Dataverse Network as an Infrastructure for Data Sharing," Sociological Methods and Research, 32, 2 (November, 2007): 173--199, (Abstract: HTML | Article: PDF).