Science Etiquette Question: Using Other People's Data

[wolffyluna]

I realise this is probably not the best place to ask, but I don't know of any better (and I should really stop procrastinating on finding out.)

So, I got the peer review back from the first year paper that's (hopefully) going to become an actual paper published by my university. The big issue that was pointed out in the peer review was that, because me and the rest of the group working on this project were doing this with limited pre-research or oversight, we measured an interspecific thing intraspecifically. So instead of having a respectable ~30 data points, I have... 4. The peer reviewer suggested supplementing this sad amount of data with data from other research.

And I was wondering what etiquette was for using other people's data? I know you should make it very clear that it is not your data, and that is [specific other people]'s data, and cite them clearly. But should you ask for permission first? And if so, is there a polite(r) way of asking that permission.

Comments

[sebenikela]

this depends a lot on the field, unfortunately, so take with dose of salt. However, in my experience:

if a dataset is in the public domain (i.e. it's uploaded to some data repository and anyone can download it) then you just need to cite the source of the data. The original authors would probably appreciate a heads-up because hey, someone's using my data! neat!, but if the data is published then it's free for you to use.

If you're like "oh this published paper includes tables with the data I need" then cite the paper, but that's all you need to do.

If you're looking for data that isn't available publicly, then you have to ask (i mean, presumably you have to ask in order to get the data to analyze in the first place). Example template-thing:
"I am writing a paper about [thing] which I've submitted to [place]. Since I have limited data of my own, a reviewer suggested supplementing this with data from other research. Your paper [whatever] reports this kind of data, would it be possible for me to access [specific kind of unpublished data you need] to use in this project?"

Depending on how much you're asking for, you could offer co-authorship to the people you're getting data from, if that's ok with your other co-authors.

hopefully that helps? asking people for stuff is super scary but in general people are at least polite about saying no if they're going to say no. And usually they'll say yes. Especially for an undergrad project. (which, huh, might be worth mentioning somewhere in your "pls to give data?" email)

[wolffyluna]

Thank you for the advice! (Now to go see if other people have actually done anything similar enough to have useful data.)