Finding data

• The most comprehensive index of Australian research data is available via Research Data Australia (RDA). You can search RDA by subject, related organisation, or by the names of individual researchers.
• Government data from the Commonwealth, State and Local governments can be searched at data.gov.au.
• Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). You can access ABS statistics through the UniSQ Library. 
• Trove brings together content from libraries, museums, archives and other research organisations.
• Australian ASX Financial data can be found using the DatAnalysis database, available via UniSQ Library.

• DataCite is a registry of datasets that searches across many disciplinary repositories.
• FigShare is a free cloud-based service for researchers to upload their data for discovery and access.
• CODATA aims to promote global collaboration to improve the availability and usability of data for all areas of research.
• OAIster harvest metadata from world-wide library repositories, including downloadable archival material.
• World Bank Data contains free, open access data about development in countries around the world.
• The Human Microbiome Project Data Set, provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a centralised repository of public data sets, which contains 9,811 sequence datasets for over 1,128 microbial genomes.
• European Union Open Data Portal allows access to census data from European Union institutions.
• Data.gov is a portal to all the US government data available online.
• The CIA’s World Factbook contains information on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities.
• Google Public data explorer houses data from world development indicators, OECD and human development indicators, mostly related to economics data and the world.
• Yahoo finance is a popular source of financial and market data.
• Google Trends is a free tool which provides online mega-trends.

Most available social data requires a subscription or payment. If required for your research, factor this into your grant.

Make sure you read a platform’s User Agreement and similar documentation to ensure that using this data for your research is not in breach of any law.

If you are a capable programmer, the best place to get social data for an application is via an available application programming interface (API).

ABS Confidentialised Unit Record Files (CURFs) Microdata

UniSQ has an agreement with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to provide public use of Confidentialised Unit Record Files (CURFS) for research purposes. CURFs contain unidentifiable data from ABS surveys in the form of a unit record and are accessible from the ABS Microdata website. The unit level for a CURF may be a household, an income unit or a family. Contact UniSQ’s Data Manager for Confidentialised Data for access.

National Centre for Longitudinal Data (NCLD)

Longitudinal data is data collected from the same individuals (or households, businesses or other entities) repeatedly over time. The data is able to show how actions and events can affect outcomes later in life. The NCLD brings together longitudinal surveys managed within the Department of Social Services. Contact UniSQ’s Data Manager for Confidentialised Data for access.