Access to existing data

There are a variety of places to find and access data that could be useful in your own research.

Some of the services on this page will link through to the data directly, while others include descriptions about the data with instructions on how to request access to the data itself (for example by sending an email request to the original researcher).

The lists below are not comprehensive but aim to provide an idea of the range of data that is available.

Australia

Research Data Australia (data from more than 100 Australian research organisations)
Atlas of Living Australia (biodiversity knowledge)
Australian Data Archive (social, political and economic data from Australian universities)
Tropical Data Hub (information relating to the tropics, both Australian and international)
Australian Ocean Data Network (primary access point for the Australian marine community)
CSIRO Data Access Portal (data published by CSIRO, across a range of disciplines)
Data.gov.au (public datasets from many Australian government entities)
National Map (geospatial national maps)
ATSIDA (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Archive)
Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) an open source tool for spatial and statistical modelling, planning and visualisation)

International

Government data portals:
- data.gov (US)
- data.gov.uk (UK)
- data.govt.nz (New Zealand)
Pangea (earth and environmental science)
Gene Expression Omnibus (functional genomics data repository with tools to help query data)
GeneBank (publicly available DNA sequences)
Polar Data Catalogue (data generated by Arctic and Antarctic researchers) - currently unavailable
IPSR- Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (social and behavioural research)
tDAR The Digital Archaeological Record (archaeological data)
UK Data Service (social, economic and population data from major UK authorities)
Climate Change Knowledge Portal (climate change)
GBIF (Global Diversity Information Facility, data about all types of life on Earth)
International Food Policy Research Institute – Data (research to reduce poverty and end hunger)
Ortolang Platform of Linguistic Tools and Resources (French language data)
Awesome Public Datasets (public data sources)

Organisational

Global Health Observatory data (World Health Organization’s main statistical repository)
UNData (single entry point to UN statistical databases)
NIH Data Sharing Repositories (health and biomedical repositories with NIH supported research)
UN Environment Program Data Resources (datasets held by UN Environment Program)
NASA Data Coordinated Archive (space science mission data)
National Centres for Environmental Information (US climate and historical weather data)

General data repositories

DataCite (datasets with DOIs registered with DataCite)
Re3data.gov (research data repositories)
Dryad (general purpose repository for data underlying scientific publications)
Figshare (general purpose repository for researchers)

Contact us

Assistance with identifying and accessing data collections can be provided the VU Research Librarian or your College Librarian. Contact details are available on the Library research support page.

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