Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research: a consortium-membership-funded data archive based at the University of Michigan that holds and curates over 10,000 social-science research datasets, providing access to member institutions worldwide.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 10 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
The General Social Survey (GSS) data hosted by ICPSR.
Is an instance
A restricted-access dataset on criminal-justice records held in ICPSR's secure enclave.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A generalist repository like Zenodo is not ICPSR.
Not an instance
An institutional repository is not ICPSR.

Editorial commentary

ICPSR was founded in 1962 and is one of the oldest data archives in the world. It accepts deposits of social-science data (survey data, demographic data, criminal-justice data, education data, health data) and applies curation to standardise, document, and preserve them. ICPSR member institutions (over 700 globally) get access for their researchers; ICPSR also hosts thematic restricted-data enclaves with stricter access controls for sensitive datasets. It is widely used in quantitative social science teaching and research.

References

Vardigan M., Whiteman C., 'ICPSR meets OAIS: applying the OAIS reference model to the social science archive context', Archival Science 7, 2007. icpsr.umich.edu.

Also known as

ICPSR

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="ICPSR (concept)"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/icpsr-concept" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/icpsr-concept",
  "name": "ICPSR (concept)",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/icpsr-concept",
  "description": "Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research: a consortium-membership-funded data archive based at the University of Michigan that holds and curates over 10,000 social-science research datasets, providing access to member institutions worldwide.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/data-infrastructure#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/icpsr-concept",
  "sameAs": [
    "ICPSR"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-10T02:06:21",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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