Finding existing data for reuse
Research data can be made findable, accessible and reusable to others by sharing or publishing research data in data repositories (for example in 4TU.ResearchData, DANS Data Stations, Zenodo).
Publishing data does not only add another publication to your publication list, but also increases the visibility of your research to others that want to reuse the data (i.e. increases impact of your research). Additionally, when others publish data, this gives you the opportunity to search for and find data to reuse within your research. Increasing availability of data, however, can make finding the right data for your research challenging.
Nevertheless, reusing data can:
- Avoid duplication in generating data.
- Save time and money.
- Help in improving and/or validating research methods.
- Allow integration (e.g. meta-analysis) of data from different studies.
- Open up new avenues of research.
Where to find existing data?
You can use several sources to look for data:
- Institutional repositories (e.g. Research@WUR).
- Online registries for research output (e.g. DataCite
Commons, Mendeley Data, OpenAIRE, WorldWideScience, BASE). - Online registries for repositories (e.g. Re3Data).
- Reference to the data in an article.
- Supplementary files.
- Data journals.
- Colleagues with (un)published data.
- Personal or institutional websites.
Support
Questions? Don't hesitate to contact data@wur.nl.