Guides & Tutorials: Research Data Management: Data Collection

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Data Collection

Data Collection is the process of importing and gathering information from various resources. Researchers can collect data primary and secondary data through the following means.

Primary data: Newly generated data	Secondary data: Reuse of existing data
Case studies Experiment Interviews Observation Simulation Surveys	Data repositories Literature & other publications Oral history Statistics & data sources

Data Sources

Want to find datasets for a specific subject? Here is a list of sources to help you get started:

data.europa.eu
provides access to over one million open data from international, EU, national, regional, and local data portals.
DATA.GOV.HK
developed by the Hong Kong government and offers data about Hong Kong.
Google Public Data
provides public data and forecasts from a range of international institutions including World Bank, OECD, Eurostat, etc. The data can be displayed as line graphs, cross sectional plots, on maps, etc.
UNdata
contains over 60 million data points and cover a wide range of statistical themes including agriculture, crime, communication, development assistance, education, energy, environment, finance, gender, health, labour market, manufacturing, national accounts, population and migration, science and technology, tourism, transport and trade.
World Bank Data Catalog
includes data from the World Bank's microdata, finances and energy data platforms, as well as datasets from the open data catalog.

Kaggle
has about 170,000 freely available datasets for people who are interested in data science and machine learning.
UCI Machine Learning Repository
offers over 600 datasets for the machine learning community.
Yelp Dataset
contains near to 7 million Yelp reviews, in addition to images and business attributes. Available as JSON files, use it to teach students about databases, to learn NLP, or for sample production data while you learn how to make mobile apps.

Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)
created and maintained by the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, is an online database containing hundreds of thousands of economic data time series from large numbers of national, international, public, and private sources.
International Labour Organization (ILO)
provides labour statistics from United Nations including labor supply, working conditions, industrial relations, and poverty & inequality.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) Data
publishes a variety of time series data on lending, currency rates, and other economic and financial indicators.
OECD Statistics
includes data and metadata for OECD countries and selected non-member economies.

DataMed
contains over 2 million biomedical and healthcare datasets.
Global Health Observatory (GHO)
World Health Organization (WHO)'s gateway to health-related statistics for its member states. It provides access to over 1000 indicators on priority health topics including mortality and diseases, health systems, environmental health, violence and injuries, equity among others.

Caselaw Access Project (CAP)
expands public access to US legal resources. It contains over 6 million digitised court decisions from the Harvard Law School Library.
Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX)
offers over 20,000 humanitarian data.
Oxford Text Archive
a repository of full-text literary and linguistic resources. It includes thousands of texts in more than 25 languages.
UNICEF Data Warehouse
an authoritative source of data and information on children.

Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
includes over 70,000 biodiversity datasets.
NASA’s Earthdata
one of the planet’s largest repositories on earth observation data which help better understand climate change, severe weather, sea ice and glaciers, hazards and disasters, health and air quality, ecology, and water resources.
Ocean Data Viewer
offers users the opportunity to view and download a range of spatial datasets that are useful for informing decisions regarding the conservation, management and restoration of marine and coastal biodiversity.

Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA)
offers open access to the best religious data, including American and international collections from the world's leading researchers and research centres.
General Social Survey (GSS) Data
contains over 5,000 variables including data on a wide range of topics to explain trends in American demographics, behaviours, and opinions.
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
maintains a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. It hosts 21 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.