LibGuides: Data Management: Finding and Using Data

Finding Data

When looking for data to use in your research, you can look in the many data repositories that are available online. These repositories will specify how you can access and use the data found. Some are discipline-specific, while others are more general. See below for a selected list of repositories.

Image by Marina Noordegraaf; CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Data.gov
This site has lots of open data from the US government, including local government information.
figshare
You can access other researcher's data as well as share your own on this repository.
ICPSR
ICPSR is a repository of social science data. Much of its data is open, but some is restricted due to its sensitive nature.
Dryad
Dryad is a repository of publicly available data, most of it associated with peer reviewed articles.
Harvard Dataverse
The Dataverse holds data from many institutions in addition to Harvard.
re3data
The Registry of Research Data Repositories allows you to search for data repositories by subject, data license, keywords, and more.
PANGAEA
Earth and environmental science data.
Scientific Data Recommended Repositories
Scientific Data is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that requires data to be made public. This is a list of its recommended data repositories, sorted by discipline.
ALFRED
ALFRED is a database of archival economic data.
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Sky Server
SkyServer provides access to the data generated by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a project working to create a 3D map of the universe.
UN Data
Data from the UN on subjects ranging from health, agriculture, economics, and more.
OAD Data Repository List
The Open Access Directory provides this list of data repositories.
Zenodo
Zenodo is run by CERN and accepts research data from all disciplines.

Ethical Data Use

In addition to properly citing data in order to give someone credit for his or her work, there are other things to consider to make sure you are using data ethically:

sensitive/confidential data: some data may be too sensitive to be shared openly, whether it is about human subjects or the location of an endangered species or archaeological site. This data must be kept secure. See the policies of the NIH, ICPSR, and the Institutional Review Board for more guidance. If you do plan on sharing sensitive data, it is necessary to de-identify it. Johns Hopkins has compiled a list of tools that will you do that.
misrepresenting data: in order to ethically use data, you must make sure that you are not misrepresenting it in any way. Do not cherry pick data in order to help prove your claims.

Citing Data

You must cite any data sets you use, just like you'd cite a journal article or book. There is not one set way to cite data, but there are guidelines you can follow. Be sure to note whether or not data are accessible from your source when citing, and if so, indicate where the data can be located (this will help you increase the transparency and reproducibility of your analysis!).

Follow a specific citation style (MLA, APA, etc):

Quick Guide to Data Citation - This guide from the International Association for Social Science Information Services & Technology. Note that it is not updated with MLA 8.
How to Cite Data - an excellent guide from Michigan State University. Note that it uses MLA 7, not 8.
How to Cite Datasets - guidelines from the Digital Curation Centre

Follow recommendations from the repository the data came from:

ICPSR
Harvard Dataverse
Citing Data - help from the University of Oregon with examples

An in-depth look at data citation can be found here.

Note that many data repositories have recommended citation formats in the dataset record. If you need further assistance, you can always ask a librarian.