Research Data Services: Data Purchase Program

Need data? We can help. Faculty and students at the University of Rochester are encouraged to request or recommend datasets for purchase. 

To make a request, contact your Outreach Librarian.

Requests

Start by telling us who you are: 

• Student or Faculty
• Your Department or Program
• Some details about what you plan to use the data for (Research? Your dissertation? Teaching?)

Then, tell us as much as you can about the data: 

• The publisher / producer of the data
• The data product name or title
• Years available and years you want
• If there are different geographies available, what they are and which you particularly want
• Price
• Where you found out about the dataset

The Process

Once you send that information, we'll look into the details and figure out if we can buy the data. We will do our best to get you what you need, but as we make our decision we consider:

• Price, our budget, and whether it’s an outright purchase or if access is time-limited or ‘leased’
• Whether the terms of purchase allow multiple users to access the data
• How many researchers are likely to use the data product
• Technical support required

For example, data that cost $20,000 for one year’s access and can only be used by one person are unlikely to be purchased.

Timelines

We will review requests quickly, but the purchase process can take some time as we negotiate a license between the data vendor and the River Campus Libraries. It can be tricky to estimate when a data product will be available for you to use after we agree to try to buy it, so try to get in touch with us early in your project. 

The libraries will make purchased data available as part of our collections.