3

Or is there a specific place that collects papers that publishes its raw data?

Improve this question
3
  • 2
    This is far too vague: what specifically are you looking for? Some researchers will publish information, others won't; some journals may make some data available from some research. Some academics may provide information on request (at least to other academics.)
    – Stuart F
    Commented Nov 3, 2022 at 10:38
  • 3
    @StuartF my reading of this is they are asking if there is a portal-type site where this type of data is uploaded and can be indexed (with some possible author verification)... like github for code or pubmed for medical papers.
    – wrod
    Commented Nov 3, 2022 at 15:01
  • 1
    Perhaps this question is more appropriate for the Academia stackexchange
    – bookmanu
    Commented Nov 4, 2022 at 7:20

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

There is no single source for this information, no. Publications may have their own internal policies about availability of underlying data for published studies. Universities generally have their own data storage/governance/archival policies.

Oftentimes researchers (I speak from experience) are responsible for the storage/archival of their own data. There's ethical implications when it comes to data about human subjects of study (surveys/focus groups are always this) which require Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval (albeit usually trivially easy to comply with). Any sharing of that data would also be subject to IRB review and have to comply with any restrictions placed on the study.

There are also probably large collections of data gathered by others who, like yourself, wanted to find it all somewhere.

And, of course, data collected by the government is likely public record and if so will be available from their own records/archives/websites, etc. If there's specific data you'd like to work with that someone else used, you can always reach out to the authors and ask them for their datasets, but there's no central repository at the global level.

Improve this answer
3
  • One could of course start such a database. It might be a good idea. Given the right content licenses of the interview data and some common standard for IRB (whatever that is) it might be possible. Transparency in research is all the rage in the 21st century.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 3, 2022 at 16:24
  • @Trilarion IRB = Institutional Review Board, they're the ethics committee that all research involving human subjects must get approval from. As to licensing, it could probably be done in a going-forward way, but it wouldn't be free and is possibly the most dramatic "non-rival, non-excludable, public good" example an economist could imagine. Short of the UN somehow finding the funding for it, it doesn't seem likely to survive.
    – William Walker III
    Commented Nov 3, 2022 at 17:07
  • You're right. It would need time and money both of which usually don't come for free, but on the other hand the costs aren't that big, a server costs a couple of hundreds of dollars per year and it could be powered by open source software, which somehow also exists, and one could still charge for access to those who can pay for it, i.e. commercial accessors. In this case maybe the usefulness for the public might not be that large. Probably interest in that data is simply too small. In academia there is certainly a push for providing access to raw data. If only there was a convenient service..
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 4, 2022 at 12:23

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .