LibGuides: Ocean and Earth Sciences: Datasets

What are Data?

Research data, as defined in ODU Policy #5350: Research and Scholarly Digital Data Management Policy, are digitally recorded information that are necessary to support or validate a research project's observations, findings, or outputs.

Research data can be qualitative or quantitative, continuous or discrete, primary or secondary, and can be measured, observed, modeled, or compiled. Data can come in various formats such as numeric, text, images, audio, and video.

The Harvard Longwood Medical Area Research Data Management Working Group hosted a 30-minute webinar Let's Talk Data! that, in part, explores various data types.

Data Examples

Data in the ocean and earth sciences can vary widely, depending on your concentration. Some examples include:

Locations (earthquakes, animals, etc.)
Earthquake magnitudes
Rainfall amount
Measurements of temperature, salinity etc.
Concentrations (carbon, nitrogen, contaminants)
Ocean depth
Storm & sea-level rise modeling
Satellite imagery
Sediment supply
Water quality

Find Data

Government agencies, local, national, and international organizations, researchers (including students!), and corporations can all be producers, and consumers, of data.

There has been a push in recent years to make research data publicly accessible, and there are many repositories, archives, and indexes of data.

Government data sources include:

Data.gov
The home of the U.S. Government’s open data. Here you will find data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more.
DATA.NASA.GOV
NASA's site for open data. Note that most dataset pages provide metadata and links to data that are housed externally.
National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)
NCEI is an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and provides access to climate, coastal, oceanographic, and geophysical data.
DOE Data Explorer
The DOE Data Explorer (DDE) is the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) search tool for publicly available, DOE-funded data resources. Note that the data themselves are located externally at data centers, laboratories, universities, etc.

Researchers can also submit their data to discipline specific and generalist repositories:

PANGAEA
PANGAEA archives, publishes and distributes data for Earth and environmental sciences and focuses on georeferenced observational and experimental data.
figshare
figshare is a repository where users can make all of their research outputs available in a citable, shareable and discoverable manner. Limit your search by type to "Dataset."
Dryad Digital Repository
The Dryad Digital Repository is a curated resource that makes the data underlying scientific publications discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. Dryad provides a general-purpose home for a wide diversity of data types.

In addition to search for data in the above repositories, you can start with a Google Dataset Search.

Google Dataset Search
Dataset Search is a search engine for datasets. Using a simple keyword search, users can discover datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the Web.

Please refer to the Find Data section of the Data and Statistics library guide for additional information.