Finding Existing Data
Before creating new data, try to find existing data for your research. Existing data can also help you compare your data to other experiments, complement your data, broadening research scope, facilitating interdisciplinary research, and save time and costs on data collection.
When searching for data, use specific keywords, which are key points in your search question. Use at least two and a maximum of four keywords in a search entry. And find synonyms for that can also be related.
Not all search boxes are the same, some do not have as robust searching as major search engines (Google, Bing, etc). If your results do not appear in the site’s search, try searching the site again with a major search engine with some of the search formatting tips below, or use an advanced search tool, such as this link for Google.
| What | Why | How |
|---|---|---|
| Search a specific site or domain | Some websites have no or underpowered search tools, or have difficult to find materials, with this you can search within | site:website.com
Eg: site:uu.nl site.geo.uu.nl |
| Search a specific file type | Filter your results to retrieve only files of a specified file type | filetype:extension
E.g.: filetype:csv |
| Search for a specific file format | Some formats can have multiple file types, especially documents | format:format type
E.g.: format:Document |
| Remove unrelated concepts | In many cases acronyms can have multiple meanings, words can have multiple definitions, or simply some websites show up too much, remove results you don’t want | -concept
Eg: -pinterest |
| Focus your search on titles or URLs | Filter results that have specific words in the title and url. | “intitle:” and “inurl:” operators.
Eg: intitle:”renewable energy” inurl:pdf |
| Broaden the search using boolean (AND, OR, NOT) operators | To find pages that might include either of the specified terms or both. | Eg: renewable energy OR sustainable energy; renewable energy AND sustainable energy |
| Find synonyms and related terms | To broaden your research results and not to limit it to a specific term. | Using the tilde (~) before a word.
Eg: ~”environmental impact” |
Geosciences Intranet Page
Ronald Pijnenburg from Earth Sciences compiled a list of databases and data search tools, this list is available on the intranet, and is a great place to start exploring data:
Geosciences IntranetData Archive Geosciences
We have an internal data repository for sharing data only amongst faculty known as Data Archive Geosciences, you can find datasets from you colleagues here:
Data Archive GeosciencesGoogle Data Search
Google Data Search is a search engine provided by Google, that facilitates the exploration of online open data from researchers.
Google Data SearchGeoSeer
GeoSeer is a search engine for spatial data webservices which can be accessed in the most common GIS applications, like ArcGIS and QGIS.
GeoSeerEarth Engine Data Catalog
Google Earth Engine provides a data catalog with multiple raster datasets of the Earth. You can include one or more datasets of your choice in your scripting environment.
GEE Data Catalog