University Library: Research Data Management: Reuse

Reuse

Considerations
Data citation & standards

Starting your own research from the existing data collected by other researchers can have some major benefits:

much of the background work has already been completed making it easier to undertake further research
it's time-saving and cost efficient due to the reduced cost assocaiated with duplication of data
the data comes with a degree of pre-established validity and reliability
potential for collaboration opportunities

However, careful consideration is required before reusing data. Make your search for data as efficient as possible by thinking about the following questions before you get started:

Is there enough description about the content of the data? Is the context of the research relevant?
Is the source trustworthy? Is it produced by a reputable organisation or researcher in the field?
Do you know how long the data will be stored and made available?
Which file formats am I able to work with? If you are planning on using analytical software, ensure you know the formats that are compatible.

Licenses and user agreements

Are there restrictions or specifications of data reuse? For instance, if you plan on commercialising your research you should avoid datasets that have non-commercial conditions in their reuse licence.
What will be the impact of these restrictions on your research?

Methodology

What is the relationship between existing and new data?
How will the data be integrated?
How will any format differences be managed?

Considering these aspects will help you determine if the data is suitable for you to reuse and help you avoid investing effort and time in analysing data that is unsuitable.

When reusing the data of others, it's critical to give proper attribution to the work of the original creator. This is called data citation and refers to the practice of referencing data to acknowledge it's source, in the same way as referencing a book or journal article.

Citing data is important because it:

Acknowledges and provides credit to the originator of the data
Allows replication or verification of the new results and data, improving their reliability and validity
Enables the collection of statistics on the impact of the data (data citation metrics)

However, because the citation of data is a relatively new practice, the standards to follow are often unclear - referencing software like EndNote does have a template for datasets, but other requirements may mean the generated references need to be modified.

Order of precedence:

Any guidelines from your editor or publisher
Any guidelines from your Style Guide or Publication Manual
Any guidelines from the data source (either the dataset creator or the data repository)

If these requirements are unclear or informal, DataCite recommends including the following elements (note this follows the APA 7 style guidelines):

Creator(s). (Publication Year). Title. Version. Publisher. ResourceType. Identifier

Publication year is the date when the dataset was published (not the collection or coverage date)
Publisher refers to the repository or data centre where the data is stored
Identifier should be displayed as a linkable, permanent URL or DOI. The DOI ensures that data can be discovered online, regardless of where it is located.
Version and ResourceType may be added where desirable.

Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles
A synthesis of work by a number of prominent groups, the declaration established principles to guide the development of human understandable and machine actionable data citations.
How To Cite Datasets and Link to Publications
A guide from the Digital Curation Centre to the principles and issues around data citation with How-To instructions for authors.
Datacite - Cite Your Data
An outline of the default format of data citation.

Finding datasets

The Australian Data Archive (ADA)
The ADA provides a national service for the collection and preservation of digital research data. The archive is based at the Australian National University.
Australian Government Data: data.gov.au
Data.gov.au provides an easy way to find, access and reuse Australian public data.
CSIRO Data Access Portal
The CSIRO Data Access Portal provides access to research data, software and other digital assets published by CSIRO across a range of disciplines.
figshare
figshare helps researchers store, share, manage and publish their research data
Google Dataset search
Dataset Search is a search engine for datasets.
National Health Data Hub
The NHDH comprises de-identified and enduring health data from state and territory, and Commonwealth data sources. It brings together data on admitted patient care services (in public and private hospitals), emergency department services and outpatient services in public hospitals for all states and territories with the exception of Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
re3data.org
re3data.org is a global registry of research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines. It promotes a culture of sharing, increased access and better visibility of research data.
Research Data Australia
Research Data Australia helps you find, access, and reuse data for research from over one hundred Australian research organisations, government agencies, and cultural institutions. It does not store the data itself here but provide descriptions of, and links to, the data from our data publishing partners.

Archaeology Data Service - UK
The Archaeology Data Service preserves digital data in the long term and promotes and disseminates a broad range of data in archaeology.
The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR)
The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) is an international digital repository for the digital records of archaeological investigations and is dedicated to ensuring the long-term preservation of irreplaceable archaeological data and to broadening the access to these data.
Open Context (Archaeology)
Open Context reviews, edits, and publishes archaeological research data.

DatAnalysis Premium
Provides fundamental equity data for listed and delisted companies including revenue and expense breakdowns, financial ratios, growth rates, balance sheet and cashflow data, director buying and selling announcements, company appointments and resignations, merger and acquisition activity and annual reports. All data can be downloaded to Microsoft Excel.
Asian Development Bank
Hosts publicly available data on key economic, financial, and social indicators compiled from developing member countries and other international sources.
Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
DFAT provide freely available PDF fact sheets that give an economic snapshot of selected countries and regions and statistics on Australia’s trade and economy. They also provide aid budget and statistical information.
OECD iLibrary
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) publications, including documents, periodicals and statistical databases. Tutorials (YouTube) - Introduction, Working with statistics
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
ESCAP maintains a statistical database, updated twice a year, with data relating to development issues in Asia and the Pacific.
World Bank Open Data
Free and open access to global development data by World Bank

Center on International Education Benchmarking (CIEB)
CIEB conducts research on the world’s most successful education systems. It offers access to information, analysis, and opinion on the education systems of the top-performing countries and includes Comparative Data for Top Performing Countries and Top Performing Countries profiles with details of their education systems.
Child Care & Early Education Research Connections
An online library of policy-relevant research for child care and early education professionals.
Department of Education and Training (DET)
DET manages a comprehensive set of statistics referred to as the Higher Education Statistics Collection.
Global Partnership for Education (GPE)
GPE is dedicated to education in developing countries. Explore global education statistics on challenges and results organized by theme, including specific data for GPE partner countries.
The IEA Data Repository
The IEA is an international cooperative of national research institutions, government research agencies, scholars and analysts working to evaluate, understand and improve education worldwide. The IEA data repository offers data and documentation files from a number of completed IEA studies.
NSW Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CECE)
CESE is dedicated to the collection of education data, statistics and evaluation.

AGSON Geoscience Portal
1:250K geological maps of Australia.
ArcGIS Online
A clearinghouse for maps and data.
Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL)
CISL contains a large and diverse collection of meteorological and oceanographic observations, operational and reanalysis model outputs, and remote sensing datasets to support atmospheric and geosciences research, along with ancillary datasets, such as topography/bathymetry, vegetation, and land use.
David Rumsey Map Collection
The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection has over 20,000 maps and images online.
The Earthbyte Group
Operating from the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney, the group have a wealth of resources available on their website.
Global SRTM 90m DEM data
Made available by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and the CGIAR.
National Map
Part of the Digital Earth Australia program, this resource has a large variety of maps, all delivered via Geoscience Australia.
NSW Spatial Data Catalogue
Discover what data is available, how and where to access it, and other details and restrictions on the data.
Spatial Information eXchange (SIX)
Enables users to integrate and view a wide selection of NSW spatial datasets, including property, cadastral and topographic information, satellite data and aerial photography.

Australian GLAM data
A list of links to datasets, portals and APIs produced by various Australian galleries, libraries, archives and museums.
The Humanitarian Data Exchange
An open platform for sharing humanitarian and crisis data across crises and organisations. The platform is managed by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Open Literature
Open Literature works to provide a platform for open-source literary criticism. All material presented is open, and non-private data can be freely re-used and distributed.
PARADISEC (the Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures)
PARADISEC is a digital archive of records of some of the many small cultures and languages of the world.
Speech and Language Data Repository (SLDR/ORTOLANG)
SLDR/ORTOLANG allows you to browse data collected in the area of speech/multimodal linguistics. Resources are grouped into four main types of items: primary data, secondary data, tools and collections. Downloading is possible on the basis of various provisions of archival law and intellectual property rights.
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
ESCAP maintains a statistical database, updated twice a year, with data relating to development issues in Asia and the Pacific.
World Bank Open Data
Free and open access to global development data by World Bank

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Data Archive (ATSIDA)
A specialised trusted research data management facility for Australian Indigenous research data.
First Nations Data Centre (FNDC)
https://fnigc.ca/first-nations-data-centre/
Footprints in Time: The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children
Follows the development of around 1,700 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families across urban, regional and remote Australia.

AIDS Public Information Dataset
This data set contains counts of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) cases reported to CDC by state and local health departments from 1981 to 2002. Case counts can be retrieved by demographics, case-definition, date of diagnosis, date of report, HIV exposure group (risk factors), and mortality
Australian Government Department of Health
Provides various sources of health statistical information.
Australian Government Department of Human Services: Medicare Statistics
Access to a range of statistical information about Medicare programs. This includes Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS), Pharmaceutical Benefits Schedule (PBS), Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (RPBS), Australian Organ Donor Register (AODR), Practice Incentives Programme (PIP), and Australian Immunisation Register (AIR).
BioGrid Australia
BioGrid links real-time de-identified health data across institutions, jurisdictions and diseases to assist researchers and clinicians improve their research and clinical outcomes.
MABEL
MABEL is Australia's national longitudinal survey of doctors. It is an integral part of the Centre for Research Excellence in Medical Workforce Dynamics funded from 2012 to 2017 by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
National Health Data Hub
The NHDH comprises de-identified and enduring health data from state and territory, and Commonwealth data sources. It brings together data on admitted patient care services (in public and private hospitals), emergency department services and outpatient services in public hospitals for all states and territories with the exception of Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
NCHHSTP AtlasPlus
Current HIV/AIDS data and statistics are available from the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHHSTP) in the NCHHSTP Atlas. Use HIV, viral hepatitis, STD, and TB data to create maps, charts, and detailed reports, and analyze trends and patterns.
OECD Health Statistics
OECD iLibrary is the online library of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) featuring its books, papers and statistics and is the gateway to OECD’s analysis and data.
The Victorian Cancer Biobank (VCB)
Provides biospecimens to academic and commerical sector researchers from healthy individuals and cancer patients in Melbourne and Geelong, Victoria. Some data about the health and treatments of doners are also stored within this archive.
World Health Organization (WHO): Global Health Observatory (GHO) data
The World Health Organization is an agency of the United Nations and is an international coordinating agency for public health. WHO database the Global Health Observatory (national statistics for health indicators) and the Global Health Atlas
The Yoda Project
The Yale University Open Data Access (YODA) Project’s mission is to advocate for the responsible sharing of clinical research data, open science, and research transparency. The Project is committed to supporting research focused on improving the health of patients and informing science and public health.

Atlas of Living Australia (ALA)
ALA provides free, online access to information about Australia’s amazing biodiversity. It is collaborative, open infrastructure that pulls together biodiversity data from multiple sources, and makes it accessible and reusable.
Australian Antarctic Data Centre
Provides observational data, maps, charts, and geographic information from the Australian Antarctic Data Centre.
Australian Data Archive (ADA)
Archive of social science research data available to academic researchers and other users. ADA International is also a repository for studies by Australian researchers conducted in other countries, particularly throughout the Asia-Pacific region. ADA provide detailed information on how to access ADA data.
The Community Data Portal (CDP)
CDP is a collection of earth science datasets from National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the UCAR Office of Programs (UOP), and participating organizations.
Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL)
CISL contains a large and diverse collection of meteorological and oceanographic observations, operational and reanalysis model outputs, and remote sensing datasets to support atmospheric and geosciences research, along with ancillary datasets, such as topography/bathymetry, vegetation, and land use.
Dryad Digital Repository
The Dryad Digital Repository makes the data underlying scientific publications in the basic and applied biosciences discoverable, freely reusable, and citable.
IRI/LDEO Climate Data Library
The International Research Institute/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (IRI/LDEO) Data Library is a powerful and freely accessible online data repository and analysis tool that allows a user to view, analyze, and download hundreds of terabytes of climate-related data through a standard web browser.
The Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB)
KNB is a national network intended to facilitate ecological and environmental research on biocomplexity.It is is an efficient way to discover, access, interpret, integrate and analyze complex ecological data from a highly-distributed set of field stations, laboratories, research sites, and individual researchers.
Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network.Data Portal
Ecological data and metadata derived from publicly funded research in the U.S. LTER Network are made available online with as few restrictions as possible, on a non-discriminatory basis
PANGAEA Data Publisher
PANGAEA is operated as an Open Access library aimed at archiving, publishing and distributing georeferenced data from earth system research. Most of the data are freely available and can be used under the terms of the licence mentioned on the data set description.
PetDB, the Petrological Database
PetDB is a global synthesis of chemical, isotopic, and mineralogical data for rocks, minerals, and melt inclusions.
TERN
TERN delivers open access to Australia's terrestrial ecosystem data
TreeBASE
TreeBASE is a repository of phylogenetic information, specifically user-submitted phylogenetic trees and the data used to generate them. TreeBASE accepts all kinds of phylogenetic data (e.g., trees of species, trees of populations, trees of genes) representing all biotic taxa. proceedings, or thesis.