Research with open data

What is open data?

Open data is data that is collected by researchers and published free of charge in order to make the knowledge available to others and enable them to conduct research. Such open data is often accessible in so-called repositories: two examples of this at the University of Vienna are Phaidra and the Austrian Social Science Data Archive (AUSSDA).

What is the added value of working with open data?

It gives you the opportunity to work with existing, quality-assured data sets in your project (e.g. your thesis) that you might not be able to collect yourself in this form, e.g. representative data for entire population groups. In addition, you can save time during data collection, which is then available for a more in-depth analysis and interpretation of the data.

What does Open Science mean?

Open data, or research with open data, is part of the open science movement. Open science means that scientific data is made available to the general public. In the spirit of open science, the aim is to ensure that knowledge is made as widely accessible as possible and that new knowledge can be created.

The video on the right (in German) explains what Open Science brings to each and every one of us.

 

 

What do I need to bear in mind when working with open data?

The data sets were not collected for your specific research question, which means you will need to invest time to "get to know" the dataset and decide which part of this dataset is suitable for answering your research question(s). Talk to your supervisor about the best way to go about this.

If you have questions about working with open data, come to the CTL's methods camp and discuss questions about qualitative and quantitative data in groups and with CTL student employees!

Resources

Information on Open Science at the University of Vienna:

 
Information on the topics "Legally secure research" and "Legally secure publishing"

 

Further links: