What are the best online resources for scientific data?

November 30, 2006 4:40 AM

What are the best online resources for scientific data?

I would like to compile a list of online data resources aimed at scientists. I am thinking of things like the Global Population Dynamics Database (GPDD), the HapMap project and TreeBase which are aimed at biologists. However, I would like to compile a list of as many of these resources as possible, right across the sciences.

Ideally these resources would provide free access to data that could potentially provide the basis for completely novel analyses or provide ancillary data that can aid other analyses.

Please can you help me compile the list?

posted by jonesor to Science & Nature (13 answers total)

NCBI Entrez and EBI Services collect a massive amount of genomic, proteomic and experimental data across numerous organisms, as well as analytical tools.

NASA's National Space Science Data Center collects declassified aeronautics and space mission data. UWisc's Space Science and Engineering Center site collects geophysical satellite data.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:08 AM on November 30, 2006

In computer vision, there are a number of databases and datasets made public for algorithm evaluation. I'm not sure that this is the sort of thing you're after but...

For face recognition: AR face database; Yale face database; UMIST face database etc.

For object recognition: The PASCAL object challenge has been collecting standard datasets.

For surveillance and tracking: the PETS (Performance Evaluation of Tracking and Surveillance) conference series releases datasets regularly, along with ground truth. For details: PETS.
posted by handee at 5:11 AM on November 30, 2006

the NIH ChemIDPlus database is free and really cool actually; you can even do structure searching (under the advanced search page). not as complete as CAS but still very handy.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 5:22 AM on November 30, 2006

Ovid is a medical research database that requires a subscription. I expect most universities and hospitals would have subscriptions.
posted by LunaticFringe at 6:39 AM on November 30, 2006

arXiv
posted by PenDevil at 7:03 AM on November 30, 2006

There are various online databases related to the human genome (HUGO), genes, chromosomes, amino acids, etc. I don't have the URLs handy but a Wikipedia search on those words will lead you to direct links.
posted by StarForce5 at 7:29 AM on November 30, 2006

The PDB for protein structures, and all of Expasy for pretty much anything protein-related.
posted by easternblot at 7:50 AM on November 30, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks for these great suggestions so far.
They are mostly just the sort of thing I'm looking for. There must be more though!
posted by jonesor at 9:23 AM on November 30, 2006

Signaling Gateway
Hubmed
Connotea
Pathway Interaction database

The author of this paper is someone you should talk to. Here's Alf Eaton's del.icio.us page.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 9:35 AM on November 30, 2006

Scientific databases
Microarray databases
posted by Mr. Gunn at 9:45 AM on November 30, 2006

ICPSR for social sciences data.
posted by naturesgreatestmiracle at 1:19 PM on November 30, 2006

For astronomical data:

Planetary Data System

MAST has data from Hubble Space Telescope and many other places.
posted by lukemeister at 9:43 AM on December 1, 2006

For paleontology, there is the Paleobiology database.
posted by HighTechUnderpants at 4:27 PM on December 1, 2006