Twenty-one years ago, long before federal agencies began requiring researchers to openly share data, Penn State faculty were voluntarily making their data publicly available.
What began as a small effort to support open scientific data has since evolved into the Penn State Data Commons, a University-wide research data repository and support system that now serves hundreds of faculty members across multiple disciplines.
Today, the Data Commons supports nearly 300 faculty members across nine Penn State colleges and multiple research centers and institutes. In 2025, the Data Commons assisted 70 research projects.
“The University was a true leader in the public-access shared datasets movement before it became common practice,” said Maurie Kelly, director of the Data Commons and associate research professor at Penn State’s Institute of Energy and the Environment (IEE). “Penn State researchers recognized early that openly accessible scientific data could accelerate discovery and expand the impact of their work.”
Science and research are at the heart of the University. Our responsibility — and our opportunity — is to expand access to Penn State research data and ensure that the knowledge we create empowers researchers, students and communities here in Pennsylvania and around the globe.
Maurie Kelly
Director, Data Commons
The Data Commons grew out of Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA), a public service founded in 1995 to provide access to geospatial data, including maps and location-based information about natural and built environments. As researchers increasingly sought ways to share their own scientific datasets, Penn State launched the Data Commons in 2005.
“Soon, researchers with other types of data also wanted to share their work publicly,” Kelly said. “We decided to create a separate site for scientific data, which officially became the Data Commons.”
Kelly noted that IEE saw the value of the Data Commons early on, and many of its faculty are data providers.
Since launching, the repository has grown dramatically. Today, the Data Commons stores hundreds of terabytes of scientific and research datasets — enough information to stream video continuously for about 17 years.
“One major success is our ability to share truly ‘big data’ with the public,” Kelly said. “We host extremely large datasets from researchers in meteorology, statistics, chemistry and physics, for example. We are the only public-access data repository at Penn State with expertise in working with large, complex data — data that is high volume, requires rapid data transfer, consists of thousands or millions of files, or all of the above.”
As scientific data became larger and more complex, the Data Commons evolved alongside Penn State's growing computational research infrastructure. Kelly credited the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) as a key partner in that growth.
“ICDS's long-standing support is key to the success of the Data Commons,” Kelly said. “Without the support of ICDS, we would not have the Data Commons.”
ICDS has a broader impact on the research data process. With its Research Innovations with Scientists and Engineers (RISE) team of computational scientists and software engineers and the ROAR Collab cyberinfrastructure, ICDS is leading Penn State into the future in terms of large, complex data and computing, Kelly said.
For researchers working with large-scale computational datasets, the Data Commons through ICDS provides infrastructure to publicly share final project data.
Steven Greybush, professor of meteorology in Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, said the Data Commons is essential for preserving and sharing large scientific datasets.
“The Data Commons allows public access to large, well-curated scientific and engineering datasets,” Greybush said. “This is critical for meeting funding agency requirements, providing peer reviewers and readers access to underlying datasets, and advancing science and engineering through collaboration.”
Greybush said the Data Commons can handle terabytes of simulation data, which is curated and stored in formats that are easy to use for the community. Through this institutional resource, the data is preserved and allows the science to advance long after the projects are completed.
This includes the Ensemble Mars Atmosphere Reanalysis System (EMARS) dataset, the first ensemble dataset to capture Mars’ atmospheric weather patterns at hourly intervals over multiple decades. The dataset combines spacecraft observations with Mars atmosphere simulations, allowing researchers to study past weather conditions such as dust storms, with implications for rover operations.
“Thanks to the Data Commons, EMARS is accessed and used by scientists around the world,” Greybush said.
Additionally, the Data Commons houses core datasets used across the University, including hydrologic, elevation, weather and climate data. Centralizing these resources reduces duplication and makes them easily accessible to researchers, saving time and money, according to Kelly.
As research data services matured across Penn State, the University also began investing in dedicated data-focused positions that specifically coordinate with the Data Commons. In Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, Kelly said, that coordination contributed to a significant increase in published datasets.
While researchers today can choose from a growing number of national and discipline-specific repositories, Kelly said institutional stewardship remains one of the Data Commons’ greatest strengths.
“One important consideration is long-term stability,” Kelly said. “While many national repositories provide valuable services, researchers also have to consider the long-term availability and preservation of their data when deciding where to share it.”
Beyond hosting data, the Data Commons also serves as a gateway to broader research support resources across Penn State, including collaborations with ICDS and the University Libraries.
“Penn State has an entire ecosystem of support and services related to research data, and we can help connect researchers with those resources,” Kelly said. “We all share the same goals.”
As the role of artificial intelligence and data-intensive research continues to grow, Kelly said the central mission of the Data Commons remains rooted in expanding access to scientific data and knowledge.
“Science and research are at the heart of the University,” Kelly said. “Our responsibility — and our opportunity — is to expand access to Penn State research data and ensure that the knowledge we create empowers researchers, students and communities here in Pennsylvania and around the globe.”
This article was also published on Penn State News.
