Data Grant Program

About the award

The University of Arizona Libraries invite UA-affiliated researchers to apply to the Data Grant Program for the purchase of commercially available data sets. The data can be numerical, geospatial, textual, visual, or audio. It can't be restricted. The library’s goal is to build a data collection for broad use by the UA community, and preference will be given to requests that support that goal. For inspiration, read about our first grant winner.

Eligibility

You can apply if you're a faculty member, graduate student, post-doctoral research associate, or staff of the University of Arizona. 

Criteria 

You can request funding for a data set purchase or subscription, including:

  • Commercially available data sets
  • Repackaged public data
  • Data collected by researchers and made available for a fee

The data set cannot include restricted data, such as personally identifiable information (PII) data, HIPAA, ITAR, or other sensitive data.

The license agreement must:

  • Conform with university purchasing policy
  • Make the data set accessible online and campus-wide (i.e., not for a single user or limited number of users)

Other criteria:

  • Data should be computationally ready (e.g., license allows for it, API ready, well-structured and described, in open formats) 
  • Data should be enabled for continued scholarly use and reuse  
  • Content should come with good user documentation and metadata. For example, includes a readme file with information on how the data was created (or the sources of the data), context for the data, structure of the data, and any manipulations that have been done.  

Preference will be given to:

  • Requests that support our goal of building a data collection for broad use by the UA community
  • Applicants who have not received funding through the program in the past

Be aware that we may not be able to acquire some data sets due to incompatible licensing agreements, restricted data, final cost, or other reasons. Subscriptions can only be guaranteed for one year.

How to apply

We evaluate applications on a rolling basis.

Submit your application

Awardee expectations

If granted the award, you will be asked to:

  • Submit a research artifact to the UA campus or UA data repository (e.g., publication abstract, sample of the analyzed data)
  • Acknowledge UA Libraries' support in any resulting publications 

Contact

Reach out to Cindy Elliott, Jim Martin, or Heather Froelich if you have any questions.