Since the publication of version 1.0 of the re3data.org vocabulary for the registration and description of research data repositories in July 2012, we have been working on its improvement according to the needs of describing a research data repository properly. Thanks to the extensive feedback from the community we now present version 2.0 of the vocabulary.

The vocabulary was restructured. Attributes and definitions of controlled vocabularies were added. Future versions of the vocabulary will still depend on the feedback of the research data repository community. We therefore appreciate your feedback and would like to invite you to tell us what you think about version 2.0.

The first draft of the re3data.org vocabulary to describe research data repositories and its documentation is online (version 1.0). The vocabulary will be used to index research data repositories gathering issues such as:

• general information (e.g. subject)
• information on the provider (e.g. responsible institutions)
• information on legal aspects (e.g. licenses)
• information on technical, metadata and quality standards (e.g. software, api and certificates).

The existing vocabulary was developed out of 20 randomly chosen repositories of a survey of 400 research data repositories. These findings as well as suggestions from project partners have led to the current and preliminary version 1.0. Future developments of the vocabulary will also depend on the feedback of the research data repository community. This open and transparent development process is to ensure a strong basis for a future standard for describing research data repositories supported by and rooted in the community. Taking all responses into account the preliminary version 1.0 will be updated to 1.1 and published in autumn 2012. We appreciate your feedback and therefore would like to invite you to tell us what you think about our work done so far.

Research data are valuable and ubiquitous. The permanent access to research data is a challenge for all stakeholders in the scientific community. The long-term preservation and the principle of open access to research data offer broad opportunities for the scientific community.

More and more universities and research centres are starting to build research data repositories allowing permanent access to data sets in a trustworthy environment. Due to disciplinary requirements, the landscape of data repositories is very heterogeneous. Thus it is difficult for researchers, funding bodies, publishers and scholarly institutions to select appropriate repositories for storage and search of research data.

The goal of re3data.org is to create a global registry of research data repositories. The registry will cover research data repositories from different academic disciplines. re3data.org will present repositories for the permanent storage and access of data sets to researchers, funding bodies, publishers and scholarly institutions. In the course of this mission re3data.org aims to promote a culture of sharing, increased access and better visibility of research data. In the first phase of the project the following tasks are prioritized:

• the conception and construction of a web-based registry of research data repositories,

• the definition of selection criteria of research data repositories,

• the formulation of a metadata schema to describe research data repositories.

According to the schedule the registry will go live in autumn 2012.

re3data.org is funded by the German Research Foundation DFG in the period 2012 to 2014.

re3data.org is a joint project of the Berlin School of Library and Information Science at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The partners are actively involved in the German Initiative for Network Information (DINI) and current research data management activities.