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Open access data is data that is available to use at no cost, freely accessible, and downloadable. SPARC has defined Open Data as "research data that is freely available on the internet permitting any user to download, copy, analyze, re-process, pass to software or use for any purpose without financial, legal, or technological barriers." However, be sure to cite where and how you accessed your data.

The list below includes links to government and other open access repositories that contain datasets with an age or aging component. Consider how adding an open access data analysis component may help you to broaden your current research program. Even something as simple as examining how often people search for aging information on the internet and how that may compare to previous years (Google Trends). You could examine how opinions of healthy aging have changed over the years in Canada (Canadian Opinion Research Archive) or the average age of refugee claimants (OpenICPSR; Statistics Canada).

You may also want to share data from your own past research in an open access repository. If you are at a Canadian institution, you can deposit your data in the Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR).

 

Open access data repositories

Open access data repositories

  • Abacus Open Data

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  • Archaeology Data Service

    The ADS is the leading accredited digital repository for heritage data generated by UK-based fieldwork and research. Founded in 1996, the core activity of the ADS is the long-term digital preservation of the data entrusted to our care. To do this we follow a policy of active data management and curation to ensure the integrity, reliability and accessibility in perpetuity of all our data. All resources archived with the ADS are Open Access, and delivered through our website to facilitate re-use by the heritage sector and wider community. The ADS is a world leader in promoting good practice in the use of digital data in archaeology, providing technical advice to the research community and taking the lead in a wide range of research projects. The ADS works within International e-infrastructure collaborations such as ARIADNE to explore new ways of connecting archives around the world, creating a genuinely global network for communication that cuts across traditional research boundaries.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Australia Government Open Data

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  • Australian Bureau of Statistics

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  • AWS

    This registry exists to help people discover and share datasets that are available via AWS resources. Learn more about sharing data on AWS.

    Click here for this data repository

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  • Big ML

    Public data sources for machine learning applications.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Brazil Government Data

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  • British Columbia Data Catalogue

    2,167 datasets as of 2021.01.25

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Canada Government Open Data: Open Canada

    Open Government is about making government more accessible to everyone. Participate in conversations, find data and digital records, and learn about open government. Browse the collection of more than 80,000 open data and information assets. 87,248 items as of 2021.01.25 this portal provides filters by portal, collection, jurisdiction, organization, subject, format, resource type, maintenance and update frequency and keyword.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Canadian Institute for Health Information

    At CIHI, we provide essential data and analysis on Canada’s health systems and the health of Canadians. We are able to track data in many areas thanks to information supplied by hospitals, regional health authorities, medical practitioners and governments. Other sources provide further data to help inform CIHI’s in-depth analytical reports. Government bodies, hospitals, health authorities and professional associations use this information to assess the effectiveness of different parts of a health system and to plan.

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  • Canadian Opinion Research Archive

    A public opinion poll is a survey of public opinion about social, economic, and political issues. This collection contains over a thousand polls ranging from the 1940s to the present, from polling organizations such as Gallup Canada, Ipsos Reid, and Léger Marketing.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Cancer Imaging Archive

    The Cancer Imaging Archive (TICA) is a service which de-identifies and hosts a large archive of medical images of cancer accessible for public download.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • CDC National Centre for Health Statistics

    The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is pleased to offer downloadable public-use data files through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) FTP file server. Users of this service have access to data sets, documentation, and questionnaires from NCHS surveys and data collection systems. Downloading instructions are available in “readme” files. Public-use data files are prepared and disseminated to provide access to the full scope of the data. This allows researchers to manipulate the data in a format appropriate for their analyses. NCHS makes every effort to release data collected through its surveys and data systems in a timely manner.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • City of Hamilton Open Data

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  • COVID-19 Data Lake

    A centralized repository of up-to-date and curated datasets on or related to the spread and characteristics of the novel corona virus (SARS-CoV-2) and its associated illness, COVID-19. Globally, there are several efforts underway to gather this data, and we are working with partners to make this crucial data freely available and keep it up-to-date. Hosted on the AWS cloud, we have seeded our curated data lake with COVID-19 case tracking data from Johns Hopkins and The New York Times, hospital bed availability from Definitive Healthcare, and over 45,000 research articles about COVID-19 and related coronaviruses from the Allen Institute for AI. More information

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  • COVID-19 Harmonized Data

    A harmonized collection of the core data pertaining to COVID-19 reported cases by geography, in a format prepared for analysis. New COVID-19 data added twice daily. More information

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Databib

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  • DataCite

    DataCite is a leading global non-profit organisation that provides persistent identifiers (DOIs) for research data and other research outputs. Organizations within the research community join DataCite as members to be able to assign DOIs to all their research outputs. This way, their outputs become discoverable and associated metadata is made available to the community. DataCite then develops additional services to improve the DOI management experience, making it easier for our members to connect and share their DOIs with the broader research ecosystem and to assess the use of their DOIs within that ecosystem. DataCite is an active participant in the research community and promotes data sharing and citation through community-building efforts and outreach activities.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • DataHub

    There are thousands of datasets from financial market data and population growth to cryptocurrency prices.

     Click here for the data repository

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  • DataPortals

    A comprehensive list of open data portals from around the world.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Data Science Central

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  • Dataset Collection

    The Dataset Collection consists of large data archives from both sites and individuals.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Distributed Archives for Neurophysiology Data Integration (DANDI)

    DANDI is a public archive of neurophysiology datasets, including raw and processed data, and associated software containers. Datasets are shared according to a Creative Commons CC0 or CC-BY licenses. The data archive provides a broad range of cellular neurophysiology data. This includes electrode and optical recordings, and associated imaging data using a set of community standards: NWB:N - NWB:Neurophysiology, BIDS - Brain Imaging Data Structure, and NIDM - Neuro Imaging Data Model. Development of DANDI is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health. More information

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  • DRYAD

    The Dryad Digital Repository is a curated resource that makes research data discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. Dryad provides a general-purpose home for a wide diversity of data types. Dryad originated from an initiative among a group of leading journals and scientific societies to adopt a joint data archiving policy (JDAP) for their publications, and the recognition that open, easy-to-use, not-for-profit, community-governed data infrastructure was needed to support such a policy. These remain our guiding principles. Dryad’s vision is to promote a world where research data is openly available, integrated with the scholarly literature, and routinely re-used to create knowledge. Our mission is to provide the infrastructure for, and promote the re-use of, data underlying the scholarly literature.

    Click here for the data repository

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  • Ebrains

    EBRAINS is an AISBL (Association Internationale Sans But Lucratif) under Belgian Law. Its mission is to coordinate the Human Brain Project (HBP) in SGA3 (2020 - 2023) and to build the future of the EBRAINS Research Infrastructure. The HBP’s explicit goal is to develop the EBRAINS research infrastructure and make it available to the scientific research community and other user groups, as a beneficial legacy that will continue to help advance knowledge and understanding of the brain after the end of the HBP FET Flagship in 2023. The EBRAINS AISBL will play a key role in bringing about that transformation and will provide the coordination nucleus of the post-FET Flagship EBRAINS structure.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • European Data Portal

    The European Data Portal harvests the metadata of Public Sector Information available on public data portals across European countries. Information regarding the provision of data and the benefits of re-using data is also included.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • European Union Open Data Portal (EU ODP)

    The EU ODP gives you access to open data published by EU institutions and bodies. All the data you can find via this catalogue are free to use and reuse for commercial or non-commercial purposes. The EU ODP provides access to an expanding range of data from the European Union (EU) institutions and other EU bodies. You can use and reuse these data for commercial or non-commercial purposes. By providing easy access to data — free of charge — we aim to help you put them to innovative use and unlock their economic potential. The portal is also designed to make the EU institutions and other bodies more open and accountable. There are 15,704 datasets available, as of 2021.01.18.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Federated Research Data Repository

    Search FRDR to find research datasets originating from researchers affiliated with Canadian institutions. Data deposited to other repositories across Canada can also be found by searching in FRDR. View the growing list of collaborating repositories.

    Click here for the data repository

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  • figshare

    figshare enables you to host large amounts of data in your online articles with no impact on your infrastructure.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Finland Open Data

    All Finnish open data from one place. 1804 datasets as of 2021.02.01.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • France Government Open Data

    Open platform for French public data.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Gapminder

    Gapminder identifies systematic misconceptions about important global trends and proportions and uses reliable data to develop easy to understand teaching materials to rid people of their misconceptions. Gapminder is an independent Swedish foundation with no political, religious, or economic affiliations.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • German Federal Statistics Office

    The Federal Statistical Office is the institution to contact first for official data on the society, the economy, the environment, and the state. We provide objective statistics that have been compiled in a neutral and professionally independent manner. Those figures are the basis of democratic fact-based decision-making processes. Our data reflect not only what is going on now but also supply information on societal and economic trends. There are various data sources and search options for official statistics. The results may be accessed via databases, visualised material and services offered to the scientific community. Nevertheless, it is not always easy to cut through the data jungle. We support you in your search for data with our Statistical Information Service. Search open data topics here or search by themes including society and environment, economy, economic sectors and enterprises, labour, government, countries and regions.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • GigaDB

    GigaDB contains 2018 discoverable, trackable, and citable datasets that have been assigned DOIs and are available for public download and use.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Glasgow Open Data

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  • Global Database of Events, Language and Tone (GDELT)

    This project monitors the world's broadcast, print, and web news from nearly every corner of every country in over 100 languages and identifies the people, locations, organizations, counts, themes, sources, emotions, quotes, images and events driving our global society every second of every day. More information

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Global Open Data Index

    The Global Open Data Index provides the most comprehensive snapshot available of the state of open government data publication.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Google Trends

    Find information on search terms or search volume reaching back to 2004. Data can be downloaded so you can explore it on your desktop. The page gives you some examples of things you could search for and also lists top search terms on the landing page. Aging & Geriatrics is one of the available search terms, and you can also filter by image search, news search, YouTube search etc. and by geographical region and timeframe and the engine will give you hints on related topics and queries.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Harvard Dataverse

    The Harvard Dataverse Repository is a free data repository open to all researchers from any discipline, both inside and outside of the Harvard community, where you can share, archive, cite, access, and explore research data. Each individual Dataverse collection is a customizable collection of datasets (or a virtual repository) for organizing, managing, and showcasing datasets.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Image Data Resource

    The IDR makes datasets that have never previously been accessible publicly available, allowing the community to search, view, mine and even process and analyze large, complex, multidimensional life sciences image data. Sharing data promotes the validation of experimental methods and scientific conclusions, the comparison with new data obtained by the global scientific community and enables data reuse by developers of new analysis and processing tools. You can browse the IDR without any special knowledge, but if you would like to see how the IDR can be used to obtain new biological insights from existing datasets, or a more in-depth explanation of how the IDR is set up, please see the Nature Methods paper.

    Click here for the data repository

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  • India Government Open Data

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  • Influenza Research Database

    The mission of the Influenza Research Database (IRD) is to provide a resource for the influenza virus research community that will facilitate an understanding of the influenza virus and how it interacts with the host organism, leading to new treatments and preventive actions. This resource will contain avian and non-human mammalian influenza surveillance data, human clinical data associated with virus extracts, phenotypic characteristics of viruses isolated from extracts, and all genomic and proteomic data available in public repositories for influenza viruses. The resource will link host surveillance and clinical data to sequence and phenotypic data for all well characterized influenza virus strains. Data obtained from public data sources for well characterized virus strains will be supplemented with IRD generated data. The IRD will provide a suite of tools for analysis of all types of influenza data and a personal work bench on which each scientist can store lists of important data selected from that available on IRD.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)

    IATI is a global initiative to improve the transparency of development and humanitarian resources and their results for addressing poverty and crises. IATI data can be an invaluable for anyone searching for information on development or humanitarian spending and projects.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • International Energy Agency

    Access monthly energy statistics for OECD countries or explore energy data by category, indicator, country, or region here.

    Click here for the data repository

     

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  • International Transport Forum

    The International Transport Forum at the OECD is an intergovernmental organisation with 62 member countries. It acts as a think tank for transport policy and organises the Annual Summit of transport ministers. ITF is the only global body that covers all transport modes. The ITF is administratively integrated with the OECD, yet politically autonomous. The ITF works for transport policies that improve peoples’ lives. Our mission is to foster a deeper understanding of the role of transport in economic growth, environmental sustainability and social inclusion and to raise the public profile of transport policy.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Kenya Government Open Data

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  • Kaggle

    Inside Kaggle you’ll find all the code & data you need to do your data science work. Use over 50,000 public datasets and 400,000 public notebooks to conquer any analysis in no time.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • Machine Learning Dataset Repository

    We built this web site as a repository for your machine learning data. Upload your data, find interesting data sets, exchange solutions, compare yourself against other methods.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • Mendeley

    Search 27.0 million datasets from domain-specific and cross-domain repositories.

    Click here for this data repository

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  • National Addiction & HIV Data Archive Program

    The mission of the National Addiction & HIV Data Archive Program (NAHDAP) is to facilitate research on drug addiction and HIV infection by acquiring, enhancing, preserving, and sharing data produced by research grants, particularly those funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. NAHDAP supports secondary data analysis through technical assistance and specialized training for data depositors and data users in the drug addiction and HIV research and policy communities.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • Netherlands Government Open Data

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  • New Zealand Government Open Data

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  • Neuromorpho

    NeuroMorpho.Org is a centrally curated inventory of digitally reconstructed neurons associated with peer-reviewed publications. It contains contributions from over 500 laboratories worldwide and is continuously updated as new morphological reconstructions are collected, published, and shared. To date, NeuroMorpho.Org is the largest collection of publicly accessible 3D neuronal reconstructions and associated metadata.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • NHS Digital

    We collect, process and publish data and information from across the health and social care system in England. Search for our publications and indicators.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • NIH Clinical Trials

    ClinicalTrials.gov is a database of privately and publicly funded clinical studies conducted around the world.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • NIMH Data Archive

    The National Institute of Mental Health Data Archive (NDA) makes available human subjects data collected from hundreds of research projects across many scientific domains. NDA provides infrastructure for sharing research data, tools, methods, and analyses enabling collaborative science and discovery. De-identified human subjects data, harmonized to a common standard, are available to qualified researchers.  Summary data are available to all.

    Click here for the data repository
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  • NITRC

    NITRC Resources Registry (NITRC-R) promotes software tools and resources, vocabularies, test data, and databases, thereby extending the impact of previously funded, neuroimaging informatics contributions to a broader community. NITRC-R gives researchers greater and more efficient access to the tools and resources they need, better categorizing and organizing existing tools and resources, facilitating interactions between researchers and developers, and promoting better use through enhanced documentation and tutorials—all while directing the most recent upgrades, forums, and updates.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • Office for National Statistics (UK)

    Search by keyword(s) or time series ID, or look at themes including business, industry and trade, economy, employment and labour market, or people, population and community.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • OpenCorporates

    The largest open database of companies in the world.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • OpenDataMonitor

    OpenDataMonitor brings open datasets to light. As a platform, it gives visitors an overview of available open data resources, allowing them to analyse and visualise existing data catalogues using innovative technologies.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • OpenICPSR

    Find and share social, behavioral, and health sciences research data.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • OpenNEURO

    A free and open platform for sharing MRI, MEG, EEG, iEEG, and ECoG data

    Click here for this data repository
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  • Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

    You can the entire dataset or break down search by categories including GDP, Inflation, Unemployment, Health, Gini (the Gini coefficient is based on the comparison of cumulative proportions of the population against cumulative proportions of income they receive, and it ranges between 0 in the case of perfect equality and 1 in the case of perfect inequality), Debt.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • OSF

    OSF is a free, open platform to support your research and enable collaboration. Discover projects, data, materials, and collaborators on OSF that might be helpful to your own research.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • Our World in Data

    Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. All data is open access and open source. Access 3099 charts across 297 topics (as of 2021.01.19). COVID-19 data is updated daily and can be accessed here. Start with the how-to instructions and check the FAQs as well. Our World in Data is created as a public good. All data is available for download. All visualisations are Creative Commons licensed. Visualizations and text are licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA and may be freely used for any purpose. The data in all interactive charts is available for download – you can find it under the Data tab at the bottom of the visualisation. There is also a Teaching Hub that provides resources for teaching and learning about global development.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • Pew Research Center

    Search by research area or key word.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • PhysioNet

    The research resource for complex physiologic signals.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • Project Open Data Dashboard

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  • ProPublica

    ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer lets you view summaries of 2.2 million tax returns from tax-exempt organizations and see financial details such as their executive compensation and revenue and expenses. You can browse raw IRS data released since 2013 and access over 9.4 million tax filing documents going back as far as 2001.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • Qualitative Data Repository

    The Qualitative Data Repository (QDR) is a dedicated archive for storing and sharing digital data (and accompanying documentation) generated or collected through qualitative and multi-method research in the social sciences. QDR provides search tools to facilitate the discovery of data, and also serves as a portal to material beyond its own holdings, with links to U.S. and international archives. The repository’s initial emphasis is on political science.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • Re3data.org

    Re3data is a global registry of research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines. It includes repositories that enable permanent storage of and access to data sets to researchers, funding bodies, publishers, and scholarly institutions. re3data.org promotes a culture of sharing, increased access and better visibility of research data. The registry has gone live in autumn 2012 and has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).Contains 2,620 items as of 2021.01.25.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • Scholar’s Portal Dataverse

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  • Science Data Bank

    Science Data Bank (ScienceDB) is a public, general-purpose data repository aiming to provide data services (e.g. data acquisition, long-term preservation, publishing, sharing and access) for researchers, research projects/teams, journals, institutions, universities, etc. Supporting a variety of data acquisition and licencing. ScienceDB is dedicated to promoting data findable, citable and reusable on the prerequisite of protecting the rights and interests of data owners and it is built and operated by Chinese Academy of Sciences Computing and Network Information Center.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • South Africa Government Open Data

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  • Statistics Canada

    Statistics Canada is the national statistical office. The agency ensures Canadians have the key information on Canada's economy, society and environment that they require to function effectively as citizens and decision makers. Search by keyword, subject, geography, frequency, survey or statistical program, or content.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • Synapse

    Synapse is a collaborative compute space that allows scientists to share and analyze data together.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • UK Data Service

    The UK Data Service is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to meet the data needs of researchers, students and teachers from all sectors, including academia, central and local government, charities and foundations, independent research centres, think tanks, and business consultants and the commercial sector. The UK Data Service collection includes major UK government-sponsored surveys, cross-national surveys, longitudinal studies, UK census data, international aggregate, business data, and qualitative data.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • UK Data Service ReShare

    ReShare is the UK Data Service's online data repository, where researchers can archive, publish and share research data, as open or safeguarded data.

    Click here for this data repository

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  • UK Government Open Data

    Searching by ‘older adults’ reveals 594 datasets as of 2021.01.19. Searching by ‘senior’s reveals 507 datasets as of 2021.01.19.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • United Nations: Monthly Bulletin of Statistics Online

    Search data by Topic, Table, Country/Region and time period/range.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • United Nations: Sustainable Development Goals

    This platform provides access to data compiled through the UN System in preparation for the Secretary-General's annual report on "Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals"

    Click here for this data repository
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  • United Nations: UN Data

    Click here for this data repository
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  • US Census Bureau

    U.S. Census Bureau is the biggest statistical agency of the federal government. It stores and provides reliable facts and data regarding people, places, and economy of America.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • US Department of Housing and Urban Development

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  • US Food & Drug Administration

    Click here for this data repository
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  • US Government Open Data

    There are 218,312 datasets available, as of 2021.01.18. Search the Older Adults Health Data Collection which has 257 datasets available as of 2021.01.18.

    Bureau considers its noble mission to extend its services as the most reliable provider of quality data.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • US Health Data

    Search by keyword. 4,720 items as of 2021.01.25.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • US Medicare Coverage Database

    Click here for this data repository
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  • US Medicare Provider Data

    Click here for this data repository
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  • World Bank Open Data

    Open access to global development data. Browse by Country or Indicator.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • World Bank Microdata Library

    The Microdata Library is a collection of datasets from the World Bank and other international, regional and national organizations. To date this repository has 3,255 surveys with 3,225,689 variables as of 2021.01.19 and can be searched by study description keyword or variable description keyword.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • World Health Organization (WHO) Open Data Repository

    Open access to global health data. Browse by Country or Indicator, or health topic including aging.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • World Health Organization (WHO) Multi-Country Studies Data Archive

    This repository currently has 151 multi-country studies as of 2021.01.19 and can be searched by study description keyword or variable description keyword.

    Click here for this data repository
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  • Zenodo

    Built and operated by CERN and OpenAIRE EU to ensure that everyone can join in Open Science.

    Click here for this data repository
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