Demands for open research data have become a mainstream expectation in most scientific fields and are being articulated by the main academic institutional actors. Many researchers in the social sciences working with qualitative approaches are deeply sceptical about such demands. Based on the strategies developed and experiences made in an initiative for archiving ethnographic data, this contribution argues that it makes indeed sense to preserve and share qualitative research data, but for different reasons and with different objectives from those invoked in much of the open research data discourse. In order to do so in a responsible and productive manner, we argue that a dialogic understanding of the qualitative research process is more pertinent than the dominant rhetoric of efficiency, replicability and accountability. Even so, many challenges remain for researchers but also for repositories, whose infrastructures often are not well adapted to the needs of qualitative social science data.