LibGuides: Research Data Management: Finding and Reusing Data

Finding Data

Part of why sharing data is so important is that it enables other researchers to fine and reuse that data, allowing for new discoveries and accelerating the pace of research. See the links below for a list of search engines and repositories you can use to find datasets for your own research. In addition, a couple of large and important datasets in the health sciences are linked to directly for your reference.

Of course, you can always reach out to your liaison librarian if you would like the librarians to search for a dataset on your behalf.

Data Repositories and Search Engines

Google Dataset Search
Google Dataset Search is a search engine for datasets, designed for simple keyword searches. While it's search features are limited, this search engine is great for searching a wide variety of sources at the same time.
DataCite Commons
DataCite Commons is a search engine that searches through many data repositories at the same time.
HealthData.gov
This government website is a great resource that enables you to search specifically for health data collected and produced by the federal government.
NLM Data Discovery
As part of its work to fuel data-driven discovery and interoperability the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has launched Data Discovery, a platform to provide access to datasets from selected NLM resources. Users can filter, visualize, and export data in a variety of formats, including Excel, JSON, XML.
re3data
The Registry of Research Data Repositories is s search engine that can help you identify data repositories on a topic of interest.
Data.gov
Data.gov is the go-to resource for finding statistical information produced by the federal government across all disciplines.
ICPSR Data Search
ICPSR's data repository is one of the largest and most well known repositories for data in the social and behavioral sciences.
National Center for Education Statistics
The NCES is the go-to resource for finding data on educational topics.
NIH-supported Scientific Data Repositories
This page provides a list of data repositories maintained and supported by the NIH.
NCBI Datasets
A one-stop shop for finding, browsing, and downloading genomic data.

Key Datasets and Data Tools

US Census Data
The US Census is one of the most comprehensive datasets available, and can be great for answering demographic, health, environmental, and social questions.
All of Us Research Hub
The Research Hub houses one of the largest, most diverse, and most broadly accessible datasets ever assembled. It also provides an interactive Data Browser where anyone can learn about the type and quantity of data that All of Us collects. Users can explore aggregate data including genomic variants, survey responses, physical measurements, electronic health record information, and wearables data.
CDC Environmental Justice Dashboard
Use the Environmental Justice Dashboard to explore data on environmental exposures, community characteristics, and health burden — factors important to understanding and addressing environmental justice issues.
CDC FastStats
FastStats is an index of easy to access statistics on a variety of health topics.
National Neighborhood Data Archive
The National Neighborhood Data Archive (NaNDA) is a publicly available data archive containing measures of the physical, economic, demographic, and social environment at multiple levels of spatial scale (eg, census tract, ZIP code tabulation area, county). Each NaNDA dataset covers all or most of the entire nation (including both rural and urban areas) and represents a set of measures on a single topic of interest, including socioeconomic disadvantage, healthcare, housing, partisanship, and public transit, with temporal coverage dating back to 2000.

PolicyMap This link opens in a new window
PolicyMap is an online geographic information system (GIS) mapping tool that aggregates many types of data for users to create maps and reports.
PolicyMap is an easy-to-use online mapping tool with data on demographics, real estate, health, economics, and more
Communities across the U.S. Use state-of-the-art platform to make data-informed decisions, without needing to learn complicated GIS software or find data from multiple sources.
Harvard Catalyst Policy Atlas This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive database of policy and public health data for researchers, policymakers, and community advocates.

EJScreen
In order to better meet the Agency’s responsibilities related to the protection of public health and the environment, EPA has developed a new environmental justice (EJ) mapping and screening tool called EJScreen. It is based on nationally consistent data and an approach that combines environmental and demographic indicators in maps and reports.
Our World In Data
Our World In Data is a collection of datasets and accompanying articles on a wide variety of topics, including health research.
WHO Health Inequality Data Repository
The Health Inequality Data Repository contains datasets of disaggregated data covering diverse topics and dimensions of inequality, from a variety of publicly available data sources. It aims to make disaggregated data more accessible and navigable to diverse global audiences.

PubMed Data Filter

Data Filters in PubMed and PubMed Central (PMC) allow you to locate journal articles with associated data sets.

For PubMed, conduct a search using your keywords. Then add in data[filter].
Example of a search string: (diabetes AND data[filter])

The results will be citations with related data links in either the Secondary Source ID field or the LinkOut - Other Literature Resources field. Both fields are located below the abstract. These data links may be to records in other NLM databases or external data repositories.

For PubMed Central, you have three different methods for finding specific types of associated datas.

Use has suppdata[filter] to find articles with associated supplementary material.
Use has data avail[filter] to find articles that include a data availability or data accessibility statement.
Use has data citations[filter] to find articles that include data citation(s).

Alternatively, use has associated data[filter] to find all articles with any type of data section described above

Evaluating Data

Evaluating data quality is an important part of reusing data, as it is important to check that the data is high quality, and, more importantly, is fit for your research need. See the checklist below for some guiding questions to help you evaluate research data.

Data Credibility

Who created the data?
Who published the data?
Who contributed to the data?
Is contact information available?

Timeliness

Are data outdated?
When are the data captured and updated?
Is version control implemented to track revisions of a data set?

Information Completeness

Are there data typos?
Are data formats correct?
Are there data outliers which may not be recorded accurately?
Do data represent the information you want to capture?

Data Consistency

Are data formats consistent?
Are data units measurements consistent?
Are types of data consistent?
Are data synched within and across platforms?

Data Deduplication

Are there repeated data records?
Are data entered more than once?