Data repositories and archives store datasets, and often make these datasets available for others to reuse. Data archives or repositories that are produced and maintained by reputable institutions, such as governments, the UN, or research bodies, can be great places of finding high-quality data. Some repositories will focus on data from a specific subject area or that has been produced by a specific institution – for example, many universities have repositories where data produced by their researchers is made available.
Once you know which repository or repositories to look into, you can search there directly for the data that you're interested in. Figuring out where to start your search, however, can sometimes be a bit tricky. We recommend a couple of options to help find data archives and repositories:
As an example, a result in re3data.org will look something like this:
Use your favourite search engine to find data archives and repositories across the internet. Now that you know the lingo, you can use the terms "data repository" and "data archive" in your search to help get you to the most relevant results. Use some or all of the keywords that you identified when you considered what data would be useful to you as search terms.
Example search vegetation AND data AND (repository OR archive) => returns results that include: European Vegetation Archive NASA Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) images NSW SEED data portal among others.