Subject Guides: Open Resources: Open Data

Open Data is research data that:

Is freely available on the internet;
Permits any user to download, copy, analyze, re-process, pass to software or use for any other purpose; and
Is without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.

Open Data typically applies to a range of non-textual materials, including datasets, statistics, transcripts, survey results, and the metadata associated with these objects. The data is, in essence, the factual information that is necessary to replicate and verify research results. Open Data policies usually encompass the notion that machine extraction, manipulation, and meta-analysis of data should be permissible.

SPARC* Article and Data Sharing Comparison Tool
"This is a community resource for tracking, comparing, and understanding both current and future U.S. federal funder requirements for sharing research articles and research data. Click below to review and compare agencies' public access plans for articles or data sharing requirements."

Resources

re3data Registry of Research Data Repositories
"Using re3data, data repositories from every domain and in every country can be browsed by subject, country, or content type, and searched by any combination of 41 different attributes. A system of icons makes it easy for a researcher to identify key characteristics of repositories such as those that are open access, have been certified, accept deposits of data, and issue DOIs. "
Secure Archive for Environmental Research Data
"SAFER-Data is a fully web-based interface to the EPA's Environmental Research Data Archive. Information is presented on SAFER-Data as a "resource" and any related datasets or information objects that are publicly available for download. The goal of SAFER is to provide open access to the environmental research data to citizens, academics, policy makers, researchers, etc in Ireland and around the world."
U.S. National Library of Medicine Sharing Repositories
"Most accept submissions of appropriate data from NIH-funded investigators (and others), but some restrict data submission to only those researchers involved in a specific research network. Also included are resources that aggregate information about biomedical data and information sharing systems. "
Open Context