Zenodo
Overview
Zenodo is a general-purpose open research repository operated by CERN in partnership with OpenAIRE, hosted at CERN’s data centre in Geneva. Launched in 2013 and funded through successive EU Framework Programmes, it accepts any research output (datasets, software, publications, posters, presentations, and more) up to 50 GB per deposit, assigns DOIs via DataCite, and provides long-term preservation backed by CERN infrastructure. Zenodo is the recommended deposit route for Horizon Europe open-access mandates and is explicitly endorsed by ANR Open Science Policy, CNRS Open Science, and Inserm Open Science as a compliant repository for French publicly funded research.
Scope and Use
Zenodo is domain-agnostic and discipline-neutral, making it particularly useful for research outputs that don’t fit the scope of a specialised repository, such as software releases, supplementary datasets, preprints, and grey literature. It is widely used in neuroscience for code, small datasets, and analysis pipelines associated with publications. All deposits are versioned, allowing updates while preserving the original DOI record. Communities can be created within Zenodo to group related deposits, and the platform integrates directly with GitHub for automated software archiving with DOI assignment on each release.
Role in the French and European Open Science Ecosystem
Zenodo sits at the intersection of French and European open science mandates. It is operated by OpenAIRE, which monitors Horizon Europe compliance and harvests Zenodo metadata. French funders (ANR Open Science Policy) and institutional policies (CNRS Open Science, Inserm Open Science) recommend Zenodo for data and software deposits where no disciplinary repository is appropriate. Within the EOSC service catalogue, Zenodo is one of the core recommended repositories for cross-domain research outputs. For domain-specific data, Recherche Data Gouv is the preferred French alternative, but Zenodo remains the default for international and multidisciplinary contexts.
Connections
Resources
- https://zenodo.org
- https://about.zenodo.org (policies, principles, infrastructure)
- https://developers.zenodo.org (REST API documentation)
- https://zenodo.org/help (help and documentation)