Research Data Management (RDM): Finding and reusing data

There is a wide array of places where one can find data. Some of these are: ​

• In an article: as part of the text, in the supplementary materials section, or contacting the author to request the data
• In data journals, which are journals specifically dedicated to publishing data
• In federal and local government agency websites  
• In research project websites
• In repositories, which can be subject-specific, institutional or general

Red Sísmica de Puerto Rico

• Catalog in English
• Catalog in Spanish

CariCOOS 

• Data in English
• Data in Spanish

Caribbean Genome Center

• Data

UPR, Mayagüez Herbarium

• Images

CIEL

• Puerto Rico Georeferenciado (images)
• 1930 Aerial Image Database (images)

A few tools for working with data: 

• Un-Scan-It (available at the GRIC)
• goodtables
• OpenRefine

These are some search engines you may use to find data:

• Google Data Search:https://toolbox.google.com/datasetsearch
• Data Search by Elsevier: https://datasearch.elsevier.com/#/
• R3Data (A directory of repositories): https://www.re3data.org
• Fair sharing: Standards, Databases, Policies: https://fairsharing.org
• Global Open Data Index:https://index.okfn.org

Some general repositories are:

• Dryad https://datadryad.org/
• Figshare https://figshare.com/
• Open Science Framework https://osf.io/
• Dataverse by Harvard https://dataverse.harvard.edu/
• Zenodo https://zenodo.org/
• Mendeley Data by Elsevier https://data.mendeley.com/

Some discipline-specific repositories are: 

• The Cell Image Library™ by Center for Research in Biological Systems
• Protein Data Bank by Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics
• PubChem by National Center for Biotechnology Information (NIH) 
• GenBank by National Center for Biotechnology Information (NIH) 
• DOE for U.S. Department of Energy sponsored projects
• NEON by the National Ecological Observatory Network of the National Science Foundation (NSF)
• PANGAEA by Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI)
• ICPSR by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan 
• Qualitative Data Repository by the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry at Syracuse University
• CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research)
• GitHub (for source code)

If you use third party data, you must cite it following these recommendations:  

• As a minimum, you should include:
  • Identifier
  • Creator
  • Title
  • Publisher
  • Date of publication
  • Type of resource 

Here are two templates and a citation example based on suggestions provided by DataCite in the document titled DataCite Metadata Schema Documentation for the Publication and Citation of Research Data:

• Templates:
  • Creator (Publication date): Title. Publisher. (Type of resource). Identifier
  • Creator (Publication date): Title. Version. Publisher. (Type of resource). Identifier
• Citation example:
  • Irino, T; Tada, R (2009): Chemical and mineral compositions of sediments from ODP Site 127-797. V. 2.1. Geological Institute, University of Tokyo. (dataset). https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.726855

Creative Commons (CC) licenses are frequently assigned to data sets in order to specify how people can use them. It is important to be able to interpret these licenses correctly.

Click on the image below in order to enlarge it and see explanations about each of the six CC licenses.

Taken from the Creative Common website

Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL)

• ​“Public Domain for data/databases”

Attribution License (ODC-By)

• ​“Attribution for data/databases”

Open Database License (ODC-ODbL)

• ​“Attribution and Share-Alike for data/databases”