Thing 4: Data discovery

Overview

Teaching: 0 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• How do repositories and portals play a role in making research data discoverable and accessible?

• What makes a good data repository?

Objectives

• Getting started: explore a repository to find research data

• Learn more: what’s in (and what’s not in) the 1,200+ data repositories in re3data?

Getting started: Repositories for data discovery

Repositories enable discovery of data by publishing data descriptions (“metadata”) about the data they hold - like a library catalogue describes the materials held in a library. Most repositories provide access to the data itself, but not always.

Explore Dataverse

• Harvard Dataverse is both open source research data repository software and a repository hosted by Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science.
• Click on this Dataverse record: Replication Data for: What Are The Headwaters of Formal Savings? Experimental Evidence from Sri Lanka Have a close look at the record to see the ways this record is made discoverable and accessible. Note how many times this dataset has been downloaded and how to cite this data. We will look at data citation in more detail in Thing 7.

Spend a few minutes exploring Dataverse:

• Try browsing or searching on a topic of interest
• See which institutions contribute records.
• Explore a record or two in depth.

Data portals or aggregators draw together research data records from a number of repositories.

Consider: the future impact of having a national research data catalog.

Learn more: Finding data repositories

What data repositories exist and how are researchers sharing their data? To get a sense of the scope of the data repository landscape we will use re3data.org to explore data repositories by academic discipline. r3data.org is a global registry of over 1,500 research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines.

Find a repository in your subject area

1. Start by going to re3data.org
2. Click on Browse > By Subject > click on a subject in the hierarchy
3. Look for a repository in your subject and note what you find

Improving data discovery

Consider one idea for how you think improved discovery of research data repositories, and the data records they contain, could be achieved.

Challenge me: Evaluating data repositories

What makes a “good” data repository? There is much debate about Trusted Repositories and other ways of evaluating repositories - including data repositories. Have a look at one or both of the resources below

• DCC checklist for evaluating data repositories
• COINAtlantic Data Accessibility Benchmark tool

Consider: your experiences or thoughts on evaluating data repositories: have you used either or both of these resources? Would you?

Key Points

• First key point.