The Illinois Data Bank is a public access repository for publishing research data from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
You are ready to deposit data if:
- your data is in a final state and not expected to undergo revisions.
- you have removed any private, confidential, or other legally protected information from your data.
- you are a faculty member, staff member, or graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
- you have permission to publicly distribute data from all creator(s) and/or copyright owner(s).
Published data:
- is open to anyone in the world.
- receives a stable identifier (DOI) for easy reference and citation.
- is readily available for anyone to access for a minimum of 5 years.
- is located in a stable environment that complies with many funder and publisher requirements.
Researcher Spotlight

What do you see as the primary benefit to you of archiving your data in a repository?
The Illinois Data Bank helped me organize and annotate my data sets so that researchers in and out of my field could use and understand my data. Many publications are now requiring researchers to upload their data to repositories and make their data easily accessible instead of writing, "Our data can be obtained by contacting the authors." However, just because the data is easily downloaded, does not mean that the data is useful. I uploaded my data to the Illinois Data Bank not just to fill a requirement but to make sure that my data was publicly available, annotated, and useful.