Biology: Biol 410 - Research Data

We've created this guide as an online handout to some of the data sources we spoke about in class. 

There are perhaps two main strategies to find research datasets:

1. Search for a journal article on the topic of interest (through literature databases like Web of Science). Go through the results until you come across one that suits your needs AND that provides a link to the dataset underlying the article. 

2. Go directly to a known data repository to search for a dataset of interest. If you do not know a data repository then look in the resources listed below. You can find a data repository by searching in a directory of research data repositories (such as re3data), or you can search across data repositories (using DataCite).

There are now journals that just publish datasets! We have included a brief list of some of the best-known ones below. But you can also search in your browser by "data journals" to see more examples. Other journals may publish datasets as well as articles. 

Selected Data Journals:

Research funders are beginning to require datasets from funded research be made openly available in a data repository. Many traditional journals are also beginning to require authors make the data underlying their published articles openly available. Often they will link to the datasets from the article. Or you can search for datasets directly by going to a data repository. 

There are many, many data repositories out there. It might be best to start with a directory of data repositories.

Research Data Repository Directories:

Here are a few examples representing different categories of data repositories. 

Selected Data Repositories:

Rather than searching each repository individually it is likely more efficient to search across repositories using one of these tools...

Search Across Repositories: