Research Data: Finding research data

Research data is information that has been collected or created to validate research findings. It can be numerical, descriptive or visual and raw or analysed.

Some examples of research data are laboratory notebooks, data files, questionnaires and interview transcripts, photographs and slides.

• You can save time and effort by reusing data
• You can reuse data in new ways to carry out further research

Remember to check the licence terms before you reuse data and always cite your source.

• University of Strathclyde's Knowledgebase - browse or search for data sets in University of Strathclyde publications.
• Strathprints - browse or search for data sets in open access publications from the University of Strathclyde.

You can filter database search results to show datasets.

For example, Web of Science Core Collection has links from search results to articles with data sets. Choose to Filter your search results by Associated Data.

Research data repositories store and manage research data. The simplest way to find a repository is to use a directory/registry service.

• Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data) - is  'a global registry of research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines.'
• The Open Access Directory - 'This is a list of repositories and databases for open data.'
• Data Cite - find and use research data. Provides DOIs.
• Figshare - makes available research outputs including datasets.
• Zenodo - 'an open dissemination research data repository' provided by CERN.

• Office for National Statistics- official statistics and datasets.
• UK government data - data from UK government departments, agencies, public bodies and local authorities.

• Public Health Scotland - Scottish health service data. Previously Information Services Division (ISD).

• Image Data Resource (IDR) -  contains multidimensional life sciences image data and 'seeks to store, integrate and serve image datasets from published scientific studies.' 

• Dataset Search - Google search tool to find datasets.

• Ball, A. & Duke, M. (2015). ‘How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications’. DCC How-to Guides. Edinburgh: Digital Curation Centre. Available online: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides
• EndNote, reference management software,  has a datasets reference type.