Basic Deposit in UBC Borealis

UBC Borealis is a cross-disciplinary research data collection. Datasets in Borealis are discoverable by Google, Google Data, Google Scholar, US National Library of Medicine, UBC Library Summon, Lunaris, DataOne, DataCite, and much more. It is an open-source application to publish, share, reference, cite, extract and analyze research data.

Table of Contents

1 Create Account
2 Create Dataset
3 Submit or Publish Dataset
4 Edit Dataset
5 Cite Dataset

Looking for a cheat sheet? Check out our one-pager! Need help? Please reach out to research.data@ubc.ca for assistance with any of the deposit steps below.

How to deposit in UBC Borealis?

The following step-by-step instructions will allow you to practice depositing data in a Demo UBC Borealis instance. To deposit your actual datasets, visit https://borealisdata.ca.

Practice Dataset

Title

UBC Farm Monthly Bird Surveys

Author(s)

Nature Vancouver

Abstract

Nature Vancouver, a not-for-profit charitable society based in Vancouver, BC, has conducted monthly bird surveys at UBC Farm since March 2007, in part to record the seasonal bird species over the year in nine different habitat areas of the Farm. Surveys occur on the third Sunday of the month starting at 8am (March to September) or 9am (October to February) and typically last two to three hours. Bird occurrences are recorded by genus and species, or when identification is not clear, then simply to genus. The nine stations of the farm include the market garden fields, the herb and flower gardens, the biodiversity hedgerows, and the forested portion of the farm.

Click to download the files

1 Create Account

Go to the Borealis Demo > Login (at top right)
Locate UBC and use your CWL to create an account. You will be redirected to UBC Borealis.

2 Create Dataset

1. Choose the dataverse (AKA “collection”) you want to deposit data into.

Choose “Research Commons Workshops Dataverse” for this exercise
You can find dataverses by going to “My Data” or “Dataverses”

2. Create a new dataset

Choose +Add Data then New Dataset (not New Dataverse) from the dropdown menu
Select a dataset template for the desired Creative Commons license (default license is CC-BY). If you change the selected template, then all other data fields will clear, so do this first.
- You can learn more about data licensing in the Licenses for Research Data workshop and the Advanced Deposit workshop.
Fill in required metadata fields marked with a *.

If desired, fill in additional metadata fields. Recommended: Keywords, Related Publications. Many more metadata fields become available for editing after your dataset is saved.

Click Save Changes button. This saves the dataset in Draft form; it is not yet published nor publicly visible. You can save the dataset without uploading files.

3. Upload data files

The Files section is at the bottom of the page. Here, you can upload or drag and drop files.

Max file size: 5GB. If your files are too large, try putting them into a Zip file(s), or contact research.data@ubc.ca for help.

By default, the software will unzip your directory upon upload. If you want to preserve the directory structure, you can double-zip it before uploading.

You can also describe the files with a description, title, and tags to help people understand the purpose of those files.

3 Submit or Publish Dataset

Click Submit for Review for the data curator to review your draft and publish your edits.

Once a dataset is published, a DOI is assigned by Borealis to permanently identify the dataset.

A Preview URL can also be assigned to share with a journal and/or peer reviewers without publishing the data.

4 Edit Dataset

You can edit elements of your dataset at any time using the Files, Metadata, and Terms (license and use permissions) tabs at the bottom of the page.
Files can be Restricted or Embargoed so they are available only on request. You can learn more about data access restrictions in the Advanced Deposit workshop.
Changes made to Files, Metadata, or Terms after publishing your dataset will be saved as a Draft version. Click Submit for Review to make the changes go live; the new version will supersede the old version.

Admin assistance is needed to deaccession a dataset, so triple-check before publishing your data. The DOI cannot be deleted.

5 Cite Dataset

The data citation is generated by Borealis based on the required metadata you entered. It’s displayed in a blue box below the dataset title and version #.
Copy and paste, or use the Cite Dataset button to export the citation into EndNote, RIS, or Bibtex.

Congrats!

Now you know how to deposit your dataset in a Demo UBC Borealis! You are ready to go live at https://borealisdata.ca!

Need help?

Please reach out to research.data@ubc.ca for assistance with any of your research data questions.