Find & reuse

Anyone can search 4TU.ResearchData for specific datasets or software items and download the files for reuse, without the need to log in.

Find data

Browse
When browsing 4TU.ResearchData you don’t enter a search term or query in the search bar.
On the 4TU.ResearchData Home page, and you will find multiple options to discover datasets.
Browse by Institution, research discipline (Subject) or check out the list of Latest datasets.

Basic Search
On the 4TU.ResearchData Home page, you can enter a search term in the search bar at the top. .
Matching results will appear under the search bar with a filter menu on the left.
To narrow your results, tick one or multiple filter(s) (facets) and click Apply.
You can sort the results by Date or Title using the sort button located above the search results, on the top left.

Please note that advanced search techniques for field searching and using Boolean operators are not supported.

Do you want to find a specific DOI?
Basic Search doesn’t support DOI search. Instead, you can easily resolve a DOI by adding https://doi.org/ in front of the DOI, or using the DOI lookup service here.

Use data

After finding the dataset you are looking for, click on the title of the dataset or on the thumbnail image to go to the dataset page.
On the dataset page, you will find the title, DOI, author(s), description, and several other fields as well as a Cite button to find the citation information.
At the bottom of the page, in the DATA section, you can download dataset files or you can access the data via an OpenDAP server-link.

How to use a dataset
How to use a dataset depends on the licence conditions under which it is published.
4TU.ResearchData supports Creative Commons licences for sharing data and Open Source licences for sharing software and code. You find the licence conditions under which a dataset is shared in the Licence section in the right-hand column on the dataset page.
If you are using content from others, please make sure you provide proper attribution. See the ‘Cite’ section below.

All metadata (i.e. titles, authors, descriptions, etc.) can be freely reused under the Creative Commons Zero waiver (CC0).

Cite
To cite any content on 4TU.ResearchData you need to select the citation text in the Cite section under the title, and use the Copy function in your browser. You can also export the citation to RefWorks, BibTeX, RefMan, Endnote, DataCite, NLM, DC and CFF. These are available in the side pane (to the right) of every dataset page.

Example citation:
Chang, Cheng; Di Maio, Francesco; Rem, Peter (2024): Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) Scanning Data of Recycled Building Materials. Version 1. 4TU.ResearchData. dataset. https://doi.org/10.4121/f8155313-9b68-46cc-ba4d-8f473cfdc190.v1

Specifically for software and code, 4TU.ResearchData supports the Citation File Format (CFF), a standardized format and schema for software citation metadata files (CITATION.cff). Developers and software engineers can include them in their repositories to let others know how to correctly cite their software. Please find more information here.

Harvesting / Aggregation / OAI-PMH

4TU.ResearchData is disseminating metadata to registries, data portals, and other service providers, to increase the findability of the datasets and software it holds.

Data portals supported are:

  • DataCite; all datasets are assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and metadata is published through DataCite. Check DataCite Commons to find datasets from 4TU.ResearchData.
  • Data Citation Index; the Data Citation Index is a specialized citation index for searching datasets. Datasets from 4TU.ResearchData can be found by selecting ‘DOI’ as the search field from the drop-down menu and entering 10.4121/* as your search term. The results for a given dataset will include a link to the data, plus standard metadata and a link to any Web of Science papers citing it in the sidebar.
  • OpenAIRE; the data portal allows to search for literature and data. Check OpenAIRE Explore to find datasets from 4TU.ResearchData.

4TU.ResearchData supports interoperability of metadata via OAI-PMH. All metadata across 4TU.ResearchData is exportable and harvestable using our OOAI-PMH endpoint.

Please contact us at [email protected] if you have any questions.