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v2026.1714 entries · CC-BY 4.0
Dictionary termTrack BStablev2026.2

Generalist repository

A repository that accepts research outputs from any discipline, applying domain-agnostic curation and discovery, and serving as a deposit destination for outputs that have no natural discipline-specific home or whose authors prefer a single multidisciplinary venue.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board
· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

  • Is an instance

    Zenodo accepting deposits ranging from a humanities text edition to a particle-physics analysis script.

  • Is an instance

    A researcher in a niche field with no domain repository depositing to Figshare.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

  • Not an instance

    A discipline-specific repository is, by definition, not a generalist repository.

  • Not an instance

    An institutional repository whose scope is one institution is generalist within that institution but is not a 'generalist repository' in this sense.

Editorial commentary

Generalist repositories complement discipline-specific repositories. Their value proposition is breadth and accessibility: any researcher can deposit any output, with a DataCite DOI minted on publication. Major examples include Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad, Harvard Dataverse, and Open Science Framework. NIH and other funders publish lists of ‘approved generalist repositories’ to which grantees can deposit when no repository" class="text-primary underline-offset-2 hover:underline" data-autolinked="true" title="Domain repository — CASRAI Dictionary">domain repository is suitable.

References

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Also known as

General-purpose repository · Multidisciplinary repository

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element
xml
<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Generalist repository"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/generalist-repository" />
Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)
json
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "name": "Generalist repository",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/generalist-repository",
  "description": "A repository that accepts research outputs from any discipline, applying domain-agnostic curation and discovery, and serving as a deposit destination for outputs that have no natural discipline-specific home or whose authors prefer a single multidisciplinary venue.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-data-infrastructure/",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/generalist-repository",
  "sameAs": [
    "General-purpose repository",
    "Multidisciplinary repository"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}

Adopted by research universities worldwide

University of Cambridge logoColumbia University logoUniversity of Edinburgh logoHarvard University logoMassachusetts Institute of Technology logoUniversity of Oxford logoPrinceton University logoStanford School of Medicine logoUniversity College London logoUniversity of Cambridge logoColumbia University logoUniversity of Edinburgh logoHarvard University logoMassachusetts Institute of Technology logoUniversity of Oxford logoPrinceton University logoStanford School of Medicine logoUniversity College London logo
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  • University College London logo

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