Find Data

There is a range of places to search for existing data that may be suitable to use in your research. It can save time to reuse a dataset, especially where data is expensive to collect, or where comparison datasets are part of your research project.

Sources include data shared through government data-sharing programs, data that requires meditated access or open data published from previous studies.

Types of data sources

There are a number of different sources of published data available to researchers:

  • Government websites or national programs, such as HeSanda
  • Data catalogues and data directories
  • Library databases, accessible by searching the collection
  • Subject or discipline-based repositories or archives
  • Institutional repositories, such as Bridges
  • University websites, research centres or research group websites
  • Internet search engines, e.g. Google or Google Scholar

How to search for data

It’s important to define the research area you need before you start searching. This allows you to focus your search and not waste time looking at sources you don’t need.

  • Define your topic and research question: Before you get into finding the data you need, make sure you’re clear on what you’re looking for.
  • Unit of analysis: Who or what are you studying? Be clear what individuals, groups, organisations, countries etc. you are focusing on.
  • Location: Make sure you know what geographic area you are focusing on whether that’s at a town, city, state or country level of specificity.
  • Timeframe: Know what time span the data is for. It could be current data, historical data or set period.

Evaluating data

Like all research sources, it’s important to assess the quality of the data you may draw on. Considerations include:

  • Audience: Understand why the data was produced – and who for
  • Credibility: Check the credibility of the author
  • Accuracy: Review data collection methods
  • Timeliness: Consider when the data was published and when it was collected

Where to search for research data

Monash’s research data repository

Monash’s research data, collections, and research activity outputs repository is called Bridges. It stores data on Monash servers providing a platform to share research outputs, research datasets, media, papers, posters and presentations.

Other repositories

Quality academic journals have their own data policies (e.g. the PLOS data policy). Many multidisciplinary repositories are designed to publish the underlying data from scholarly publications using FAIR principles.

There are major repositories such as figshare and Dryad, as well as discipline specific repositories you'll see below.

To find a discipline-specific research data repository, search the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) and the Registry of Research Data Repositories.

Data journals

Data journals publish brief articles that describe datasets. They are often open access and peer-reviewed, and the articles can be cited.

Examples include:

  • Scientific data
    Open-access, peer-reviewed publication for descriptions of scientifically valuable datasets. Primary article-type is the Data Descriptor, designed to make data more discoverable, interpretable and reusable.
  • Geoscience data journal
    Publishes short data papers cross-linked to, and citing, datasets that have been deposited in approved data centres.
  • Journal of open archaeology data
    Peer reviewed data papers, describing archaeology datasets with high reuse potential.
  • GigaScience
    Open-access open-data journal. Publishes 'big-data' studies from life and biomedical sciences.

A number of data journals also support altmetrics that track the number of data views, number of downloads, and social media 'likes' and recommendations. These can be early indicators of the impact of data, before the long tail of formal citation metrics can be assessed.

Citing research data

Data should always be cited to give credit to the original author or producer and to help other researchers find the material.

For in-depth information on how to cite research data go to our citing and referencing guides.