What is data reuse? 

Data reuse means using data for other purposes than it was originally collected for. One of the FAIR principles is that data should be well-described and licensed in a way that allows others to use it in future research. 

Why reuse research data?  

Reusing data can: 

• Avoid duplication in generating data
• Obtain reference data for your research
• Save time and money
• Help in improving and/or validating research methods
• Gain novel insights by connecting and meta-analysing datasets  

Where to find existing data?  

The increasing availability of research data can make finding the right data for your research challenging.  Good online sources to search for research data are:  

• Institutional repositories of universities and research institutes, e.g. Research@WUR
• Online registries for research output, e.g. DataCite Commons, Mendeley Data, OpenAIRE, BASE
• Data repositories, e.g. 4TU.ResearchData, DANS Data Stations, Zenodo
• Governmental / public data sources, e.g. KNMI, CBS, Dutch Government
• Reference to the data in articles
• Supplementary files
• Data journals  
• Colleagues with (un)published data
• Personal or institutional websites 

Tips for reusing data 

When you have found data that you can potentially use for your research, make sure to: 

• Check the licence, i.e. the terms of use which tell you what you are allowed to do with the data (for data this usually is a Creative Commons licence)
• Cite the data, even if the licence doesn't require it (it is good practice to attribute and credit researchers for their scientific work)
• Ask permission when there is no licence on the data
• Check whether the data files are in reusable, i.e. open or preferred, file formats
• Check whether there is a readme file in which the data is explained