The Illinois Data Bank is a public access repository for publishing research data from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
You are ready to deposit data if:
- your data is in a final state and not expected to undergo revisions.
- you have removed any private, confidential, or other legally protected information from your data.
- you are a faculty member, staff member, or graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
- you have permission to publicly distribute data from all creator(s) and/or copyright owner(s).
Published data:
- is open to anyone in the world.
- receives a stable identifier (DOI) for easy reference and citation.
- is readily available for anyone to access for a minimum of 5 years.
- is located in a stable environment that complies with many funder and publisher requirements.
Researcher Spotlight

What influenced your decision to deposit your data in the Illinois Data Bank?
Social problems exist within space and time, and thus there are forces at play in Illinois’ communities that are not considered by aspatial theories and analysis. As an undergraduate at Illinois learning about Geographic Information Systems, I would have appreciated having a resource like this to reduce the barrier of entry for a social scientist to think about measures spatially. It just changes your cognitive framework when you can visualize things like racial stratification, population distribution, political election results… or even how all of these measures interact with one another! GIS enhance sociological research by encouraging a different way of thinking about societal challenges.