Share Data

One of the 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. Depositing files produced from the analysis of existing data is also encouraged.

Deposit to NIJDeposit to OJJDPDeposit to BJS

Benefits of Sharing Data

Data archiving has benefits:

  • Your study is described on the NACJD website.
  • NACJD distributes your data and documentation to interested users, freeing you from using your own time and resources to do so and permitting other researchers to reanalyze the data.
  • Once the data are archived, you are freed from storing it.
  • You and your colleagues can help each other with future projects by sharing the data across different platforms.

Preparing Files

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

NACJD encourages researchers to deposit well-formatted, computer-readable data for long-term preservation and to promote reuse by other social science researchers. Information required as part of the deposit process includes, but is not limited to, survey instruments and codebooks.

If you want to share data not sponsored by our funders, contact us. 

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)