In today's digital landscape, finding relevant information that can be applied in research can be both an
art and a science. This guide covers two main approaches; direct searches, where you target specific information, and indirect searches, which allow for more exploratory and serendipitous discoveries.
Direct searches involve using precise keywords and filters to locate the information you need in dedicated databases.
Indirect searches encourage a broader exploration, potentially leading to unexpected findings. The indirect route can e.g. be through searches in the literature or "grey" literature like a report from a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO).
Whether you are a seasoned researcher or just starting out, our guide will walk you through practical techniques for both direct and indirect searches, helping you make the most of your time online and uncover valuable data for your projects.
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In some cases there are dedicated databases for specific data within certain disciplines. Astrophysics Data System (ADS) for data in astronomy, or the Protein Data Bank for molecular biologists are two such examples. See this list for more disciplinary data repositories.
Some universities (e.g. University of Copenhagen and Roskilde University) have access to the Data Citation Index of Web of Science (WoS) where it is possible to search for research data and data studies in a similar way as when searching for literature.
Many universities have institutional repositories for research data, through which data can be shared and thus found. Finding data here requires that you have an idea beforehand of the type of data you are looking for, which in turn might be found there.
Other repositories are independent of institution or discipline. They are often called multidisciplinary or generalist repositories. An example of this is Zenodo, where researchers from all over the world deposit data from their research projects.
Another useful source is re3data ("Registry of Research Data Repositories") where you can search for data repositories. Browse by subject, country or content type to find a repository that suits your needs. You can easily filter by many different features and options, including types of access, offered licenses or metadata standards.
Searching directly in these repositories can be effective if you know what you are looking for, but can also be time consuming if you are trying to determine the existence of a given dataset, or if your search is explorational. A search that goes across repositories can be more efficient if you are searching on a broader level, and a number of services exist that can perform this job. Google Dataset Search, Datacite and OpenAIRE are powerful search resources in this respect.
Sometimes a search for data can be difficult because of the lack of relevant databases for research data. Databases like Web of Science (WoS) or SCOPUS collect information about published articles and other types of publications but such comprehensive databases do not yet exist for data. Literature databases can however be used to find research data indirectly. The search functions of WoS or SCOPUS are excellent to find research articles, and sometimes these articles have links to the underlying data that were collected or used in the project (e.g. associated data in WoS). The search techniques used in systematic literature searches can be applied to identify articles or other publications within the field of interest and then these articles can be checked for links to the supporting data.
Additionally, in WoS you can limit a subject search to the document type "Data Paper". This will show so-called data articles - articles that describe the collected and used data for a project. A similar function is present in SCOPUS, where you can filter search results to show data papers.
You can also search directly in journals that are dedicated to data papers, like Econometrics, Data in Brief, Data and Scientific Data.
There might be references to data in other types of literature like reports from NGO's, or you can find collections of data on public authorities' webpages (registries). International organisations like Statistics Denmark, UN, EU, or the World Bank can also be sources of useful data. They may not be created for research purposes specifically but the quality of the data and trustworthiness of the source could very well warrant using the data in your research.
Another indirect approach to finding data could be checking author profiles (e.g. Pure, Google Scholar etc.) of researchers that you know are working with the type of data you are looking for.