AGRIS now facilitates access to open datasets
The AGRIS team is pleased to announce that AGRIS users can now explicitly search for datasets on the AGRIS website.
This new function comes with access to the inaugural 1,528 datasets that were added to AGRIS. The initial datasets are from providers like the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) or Ag Data Commons.
What is a dataset? A dataset is a collection of related sets of information that is composed of separate elements but can be manipulated as a unit by a computer. Datasets can be open, which means that the data is open for everyone to access, modify, reuse, and share. Finding datasets has been a challenge over the years, however many services have been established to publish and expose datasets. Since 2011, Google Public Data Explorer helps explore vast amounts of datasets of public interest. AGRIS seeks to increase the visibility of agriculture-related datasets and links them to the AGRIS database. |
This development is part of several small improvements to the AGRIS interface where users can expect further enhancements in the coming months.
The new function strengthens AGRIS’ goal of facilitating access, not only to bibliographic information on scholarly and scientific publications, but also to datasets related to searches conducted on AGRIS.
Searching for datasets on AGRIS
There are two possibilities to search for datasets in AGRIS:- (i) refine the results of the simple search; and (ii) the advanced search functionality of AGRIS.
Once you have started a simple search by adding keywords to the search bar on the homepage, you will get a list of search results. On top of this list, there is a box to filter the search results for publications, datasets or both. By default, both categories are shown, but you can click on “Datasets” and then on “refine search” to show only datasets.
How to access datasets using the AGRIS advanced search
Access the AGRIS advanced search clicking on the “Get Advanced Search” button under the search bar on the homepage. Then you can perform a search entering your keywords in the search bar. Once the list of results is shown on the left side of the screen, the search can be refined by any of the options shown on the right side of the screen, including the type of search results.
You can now select a dataset of interest by clicking on the title and finding further information about the dataset, like the title, a description, the source, AGROVOC keywords and other subjects. On the right side of the screen, there will be a link that leads directly to the dataset itself “Access the dataset”.
