About Research Data Australia

Research Data Australia  is a set of web pages describing data collections produced by or relevant to Australian researchers. It is designed to promote visibility of research data collections in search discovery engines such as Google and Yahoo, and to encourage the re-use of those data collections.

Research Data Australia is a cross-disciplinary portal that complements institutional and discipline-based portals by providing an additional way to find and access research collections. It is not intended as the only access point for discovery. More information

Complementary relationship with source metadata

Research Data Australia does not replace the detailed metadata stored in repositories or local metadata stores, or displayed in institutional or discipline-based portals. Instead, it provides an additional way to find and access research collections across institutions and across discplines.

Research Data Australia displays only metadata supplied to the ANDS Collections Registry, which is a shared sub-set of the metadata stored in repositories or local metadata stores. Such stores usually hold the more detailed metadata required at the local level. Research Data Australia therefore provides an initial discovery mechanism which links to, and directs searchers to, that local metadata.

ANDS expects that any reference to activity, collection, party or service metadata records would cite the source metadata, rather than the subset of metadata shared with ANDS.

Display format

Research Data Australia displays only the metadata most important for deciding whether a collection, activity, party or service is of interest; it does not display all the metadata present in the ANDS Collections Registry database (for example, identifiers are not displayed). However, the full ANDS Collections Registry metadata record can be accessed through a hyperlink, and all the metadata elements are searchable.

Research Data Australia uses a standard format for displaying information to provide predictability for users. The display format is not customised to match the metadata shared with ANDS from many different sources as this would be confusing for users. Interested users who follow the link to the original metadata source will be able to benefit from any custom search and display functionality provided by those sources.

Please send any feedback on this page to guides@ands.org.au