Find and Use Data

Researchers often store and publish their data in so-called repositories, i.e. digital archives. There are thousands of repositories that make data openly accessible so that it can be used for one's own research.

There are generic, institutional and discipline-specific repositories. The best way to find existing data for reuse is by searching in discipline-specific repositories. How to start your search:
 

• Ask the community: Which repositories are generally used by other researchers in your discipline?
• Recommended repositories of research funders : Both the SNSF and the European Commission maintain lists of subject-specific data repositories.
• re3data.org is another good starting point for your research. re3data.org is currently the most important and largest registry of research repositories world-wide.

• Subject = filter by discipline
• Data Licenses = data are licensed for reuse
• Data Access = data are openly accessible
• PID (persistent identifier) = the repository assigns persistent identifiers to its objects, e.g. DOIs.

In order to be able to work with your found data, you must have the appropriate rights. You must also comply with the terms and conditions of the license. Only then can you process the data further. For further processing (and proper data management) you would also document your reuse and then cite the data in the publication.

Sometimes the repository indicates how the data should be cited. In all other cases we recommend the the specification by DataCite (p. 9):
 

Creator (PublicationYear): Title. Publisher. (resource type). Identifier. 

Example:
Max Muster (01.01.2019): Survey about xy. MegaRepository. Dataset. http://doi.org/12.3456/7.8910.
 

Science IT supports UZH researchers in technical matters for software solutions, data storage, data management and data visualization.