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Data Deposit Costs

Data Deposit Costs

Part of the MorphoSource mission is to support scholars and institutions such as museums by facilitating their efforts with 3D data to make those data accessible, managed, and preserved. As part of this mission, we do what we can to subsidize and support contributors regarding costs associated with data deposit. We are able to do this through MorphoSource’s grant funding from agencies such as the U.S. National Science Foundation, as well as from Duke University where we are headquartered. For users or institutions with large amounts of data, we may ask users to seek grant or institutional funding to support data deposit costs.

Before proceeding to details, let us highlight two quick points concerning costs associated with MorphoSource. First, users are never charged for data consumption. Whether that means viewing or downloading data, there are no costs associated with using data. Second, MorphoSource is structured around a model where data deposit costs only ever occur on initial data deposit. There are no ongoing or “surprise” costs over time for depositing data. 

Subsidized Storage

MorphoSource is able to subsidize or support free contribution of data for most users with 100GB or less of data to contribute. This means those users will encounter no costs associated with data deposit. In order to contribute data, users must complete an application for contributor status in which they describe the size of data they intend to deposit as well as the deposit use case.

For users with between 100GB and 1TB of data to contribute, MorphoSource may be able to subsidize or support contribution in full (i.e., free) or in part depending on the specific nature of the data, the data contribution use case, and our current funding. We encourage users to reach out to communicate with us concerning their data and use case if they fall into this range. Users can provide details about the size of their data deposit, the nature of the data, and their use case as part of the process of applying for contributor status. In any case, users should expect that requests to contribute more than 100GB will usually initiate a conversation between the requesting user and MorphoSource staff about availability of funds to support the deposit. 

For users with more than 1TB of data to contribute, see the section below concerning large data deposits.

Please note that these data size limits apply to the total contribution of data by a user or institution to MorphoSource. If a user initially has contributor status approved for a deposit of 100GB, and then later seeks to contribute 200GB more data, that user must contact the MorphoSource team for approval for any increase to the total contribution size.

Large Data Deposits

In most cases, for data deposits larger than 1TB, MorphoSource will ask that users seek institutional or grant funding to pay data storage costs. In rare cases, MorphoSource may be able to subsidize or support free contribution of data, so users are still encouraged to communicate with our team regarding their data deposit. Unsubsidized data deposits require a one-time data deposit fee in exchange for long-term archival of and access to data. MorphoSource’s mission is to retain all data contributed to the repository for as long as MorphoSource continues to exist, and this one-time data deposit helps support this goal. The fee is currently $3.47 per GB of data plus a flat $30.00 deposit fee. Currently, the data deposit fee may be paid through check or wire transfer. We will soon be able to accept credit card transactions to pay deposit fees. We expect the data deposit fee to increase by about 4% when we begin processing payments through credit cards, but to stabilize after that.

It is often possible to seek funding to support costs associated with data deposits. Many funding bodies, such as the U.S. National Science Foundation, allow for data deposit costs to be included as a budget item in funding project proposals. Some institutions are also able to help researchers or departments to cover costs of depositing data. We are happy to help users discuss options for seeking additional funding for data deposits. MorphoSource can provide official quotes for data deposits upon request for grant proposals requiring them as documentation of budget requests.

Future Horizons for Data Sustainability

While our current approach toward subsidizing data deposits is very flexible and allows many users to deposit relatively large amounts of data for free, this is supported by time-limited  NSF funding, and so it is likely this approach will not always be feasible. For budgeting purposes, users should be aware that in the next two to five years, MorphoSource will shift to a model in which all users will receive a smaller amount of free storage (likely around 15GB), and contribution of more data will in most cases incur costs that scale with the number of gigabytes users intend to contribute (see above for current rates). Under this model, users will make a one-time payment to purchase a data allocation for the amount of storage the user expects to contribute, where this payment will support the long-term archiving of and access to data.  Contributing data in excess of the initial allocation size will require further one-time payments to increase data allocation size or create new data allocations. These fees are strictly used to cover and recover costs of supporting data and running MorphoSource. Additionally, even under this model, we will continue to subsidize some quantity of data as our funding support allows.

We are also working on ways to leverage data resources spread across multiple institutions in ways that will hopefully allow us to provide more storage to users without cost or with lower costs. One example of this is that we are attempting to form partnerships with institutions and/or museums to integrate institutional or museum storage with MorphoSource in a way where data accessible in MorphoSource can be routed to or accessed from storage managed by that institution or museum rather then MorphoSource-managed storage. Likely such storage would be used for dataset deposits representing objects managed by institutions or museums, or data created by individuals affiliated with the institution or museum. Data stored in this way would not incur expenses related to MorphoSource storage. Thus, we may be able to reduce or eliminate the requirement of deposit fees for these “remotely stored” datasets.

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