Narrow Down the Research Question
Before diving into your search, take a minute to think about what data you are interested in and where it might be located. Review the Library's Information Literacy guide for advice on focusing your topic.
- What is the topic? What are the key concepts? (ex: cervical cancer screening, infant mortality)
- What is the unit of analysis? (ex: older adults, families, hospitals)
- What region? (ex: US, Nation, San Francisco)
- What time period? (ex: Date limits)
- What variables do you need for your research?
- Who would have this kind of data? (ex: federal government, health department, physicians organizations, etc.)
Once I have my topic, then what?
There are many ways to find research data. You can search directly in data repositories, check out the literature to see what data other researchers are citing or try a google search. Depending on your topic one approach might work best or you might need to try all three.
Searching the Literature via PubMed
By searching PubMed you can find articles where other researchers have cited or linked to data relevant to your research topic. Here are some tips:
- Use the filter: "Associated Data" or add the data[Filter] to your search string
- Other PubMed searching tips from the Library
Searching Data Repositories
Data repositories are excellent places to search for data, especially if there is a repository for your discipline or data type. Below are some of the most common data repositories relevant to UCSF researchers.
Clinical Data
- UCSF Clinical DataYour guide to accessing UCSF identified, and de-identified clinical data for research.
- ClinicalStudyDataRequest.comA consortium of clinical study data providers that facilitates access to patient-level data from clinical studies. Participating study sponsors include: Astellas, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Daiichi Sankyo, Eisai, GSK, Lilly, Novartis, Roche, Sanofi, Takeda, UCB and ViiV Healthcare.
- VivliAn independent general access data repository and search engine through which individual participant-level data and metadata from clinical trials conducted by researchers in academic, industry, foundation, and non-profit entities can be identified, hosted, shared and analyzed. Learn more about our UCSF Vivli membership.
- Yale University Open Data Access (YODA) ProjectThe YODA project is a partnership between Yale University and the pharmaceutical industry to make clinical trial data available for research. Includes trials from Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Inc, Queen Mary University of London, SI-BONE, Inc.
Social Science & Public Health Data
- Population Health Data GuideThis guide lists a variety of datasets for population health and health services research
- ICPSRA data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. ICPSR features 21 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.
Biomedical Data
- NIH-Hosted data sharing repositoriesA list developed to help researchers to locate appropriate resources to sharing data
- PLOS ONE: Recommended RepositoriesPLOS has identified a set of established repositories that are recognized and trusted within their respective communities.
Other Places to Find Data and Data Repositories
- COVID DatasetsThis is a guide to research resources for COVID-19 curated by the UCSF Library. Currently the guide contains links to openly accessible research datasets, literature collections, and patient resources related to COVID-19.
- Data.govCompilation of federal datasets with links to access data
- Data is PluralA weekly newsletter highlighting interesting well-curated datasets from a variety of domains and topics. You can also search a spreadsheet of past datasets
- DryadThis public data repository contains over 20,000 openly accessible research datasets and is free to use for UCSF researchers
- Open Data NetworkSearch engine for government data from cities, counties, and states on topics including health, social services, politics, and recreation.
- Scientific DataAn open access journal spotlighting interesting research datasets with detailed descriptions and methodologies.
Searching the Web via Google
Google is a great resource for finding data that is located on government websites as well as in data repositories. Here are some tips for refining your search:
- Search with keywords. For example: ("data" and "cervical cancer screening") OR ("data repository" and "cancer")
- Use Google search tools
- intitle: to find page titles with specific keywords (ex: “cervical cancer screening” AND intitle:data)
- site: to filter to certain website domains (ex: site:.org, site:.com, site:.edu)
- filetype: to filter to certain kinds of files (ex: filetype:csv for spreadsheets)
Other Options for Finding Data
If you are still not finding the data you need consider these other steps:
- If data is collected by an organization, it's possible the data is located on their website
- Networking! Reach out to colleagues for permission and access to datasets