Penn State
Penn State Data Commons

Share Data, Develop Metadata, Manage Data

Who can participate?

PSU faculty, researchers, staff, and students can participate in the datacommons@psu. We accept many different formats of data including shapefiles, jpegs, tifs, Excel spreadsheets, Access databases, pdf files, Word documents, text files, geodatabses, and more. Your project data and related documents and reserach material will be preserved and stored for future use and public access. Data, surveys, instruments, models, and documents resulting from or needed for a funded project from NSF, NIH, or other funder can be stored by the datacommons@psu and support your data management plan requirements. Just follow the steps listed below.

How do I participate?

Step 1: Sharing data through the datacommons@psu is easy! The first step is to Contact us via email or phone--814-863-0104.

Step 2: We will discuss the data you wish to share including format, size, access/use terms, geographic extent, time frame, and possible interest from others on campus or collaborators. For more information about this process, see our datacommons@psu Data Questionnaire in the next section of this page.

Step 3: We will discuss the creation of metadata with you and help create the metadata.

Step 4: Once you are ready, we will place your data on the datacommons@psu site and integrate it into our data discovery tools. We will also link your data to your project, personal or department website and to any reports or publications related to your data.

Step 5: We will notify you when your data is made available and provide an opportunity for you to review the information.

Step 6: YOU are now a data provider! Thank You!

Want to know more about the process?


Take a look at our datacommons@psu Data Sharing Questionnaire. This questionnaire is used by datacommons@psu staff to develop metadata for your data. The questions included represent the types of questions we will discuss with you.

Data Management Plans


Need help with your required Data Management Plan? Take a look at our Data Management Plan Questionnaire for guidance. Members of the Penn State community can easily share and house their final data and research results through the datacommons@psu or make their models, applications, and tools searchable through our interface. The datacommons@psu will also develop metadata for your data and provide capabilities information to support your NSF, NIH, or other agency data management plan. The datacommons@psu hosts final project data or core data that supports research, teaching, and outreach at PSU. There are many other resources at PSU to support research project development. Please see our Research Gateways section for more information.