What is PURR?

What is PURR?

The Purdue University Research Repository (PURR) is a research collaboration and data management solution for Purdue researchers and their collaborators.

PURR allows you to collaborate on research and publish datasets online. Examples of research data may include spreadsheets, instrument or sensor readings, software source code, surveys, interview transcripts, or images and audiovisual files. Sharing the data that supports your research enables other scholars to reuse and cite your data as well as to reproduce your research.

Data Management Plans

Many funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health require a Data Management Plan with grant proposals. While having a good data management plan does not guarantee funding, a poor data management plan may be the reason a proposal is rejected. If your community has an established repository for sharing research data, use it! But if you're wondering what data management is, or if you're looking for data management support, PURR is a good solution for many projects.

How Does It Work?

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  • Create a Project

    • A project is a private space for you to collaborate within your research group. Any Purdue faculty member, graduate student, or staff can log onto PURR and create a project. You can click a link and invite collaborators from Purdue or other institutions, who will get an email with a link to join your project.

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  • Begin Your Research and Collaborate

    • Projects provide storage and web-based tools to facilitate collaboration among your invited collaborators. By default, a project is allocated 100M of storage for three years, without charge. If you are awarded a grant and associate it with the project, this is increased to 100G for ten years, or the life of the grant – also without charge. If needed, more storage is available for purchase.
    • As you collect or create datasets, you can upload and share them with other project members. Post notes or send messages to project members and discuss methods and results. Assign to-do list items to each other to coordinate work, and use the activity feed to stay on top of all project activities.

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  • Publish Your Data

    At any point during your project, you can publish datasets out of your project and make them available to the world from the PURR repository.

    • Each data publication has a title, authors, an abstract, associated documentation, and a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI) that can be used to reference the data in journal and conference papers.
    • Data publications are maintained for at least 10 years after the date of publication (see space allocation page for details). After 10 years, datasets are curated by Purdue Libraries and maintained as a part of the Purdue Libraries’ collections.

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  • Wrap Up Your Project or Keep It Going

    • Six months before a project comes to the end of its support, the project owners will receive an email saying that the project and its space will expire. You have the opportunity to purchase more time and space or wrap up your project. Your published datasets, however, will continue to remain online for a minimum of 10 years or longer as a part of the Purdue Libraries’ collection.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Purdue University Research Repository (PURR) is a university core research facility provided by the Purdue University Libraries and the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research and Partnerships, with support from additional campus partners.