What is publicly available data?

In science it is essential to share knowledge and findings, to allow for us to learn from each other and build upon what others have discovered. Publishing articles about research is part of this sharing effort, but it is also necessary to share the data that results from investigations, for example other researchers may be able to use the same data to investigate different questions.

To facilitate sharing researchers’ data, it can be uploaded to data resources, where the data is curated and made available for anyone to reuse. Some data resources also perform analyses to extract new information from the data.

Publicly available life sciences data is available across many different subject areas, from genomes and gene expression to protein structures and pathways. Are there any publicly available data resources that you’ve already used in your studies or work? You will see many different examples of data resources throughout this collection.

The first online tutorial in this collection will introduce you to the concept of publicly available data, showing you what kind of data is available and how you can use it. It will take about 30 minutes to complete.

  Go to Using publicly available data: an introduction

Once you have finished this online tutorial, come back here to continue the collection and learn more about publicly available data resources.