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 domain repository is suitable.
References
- NIH, 'Selecting a Generalist Repository for NIH-Supported Research' (sharing.nih.gov).
Also known as
General-purpose repository · Multidisciplinary repository
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Generalist repository"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/generalist-repository" />{
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"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/data-infrastructure#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/generalist-repository",
"sameAs": [
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"Multidisciplinary repository"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
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},
"dateModified": "2026-07-10T02:06:21",
"inLanguage": "en"
}
