Portal

A Theme page is a page on Research Data Australia that brings together content across Research Data Australia around a particular subject and provide an alternative path to discovery of data through thematic browsing.

To browse or access the available themes in RDA, go to https://researchdata.edu.au/themes.

Research data descriptions available on Research Data Australia are owned and managed by the contributor. Researchers can access or download the data from the provider's repository or database; or by using a supported tool, for as long as access is open to everyone. In some cases, where direct access is not available, access to the data can be done via registration or via a mediated access or data may even be available offline. All these restrictions or conditions can be found in the Access section of the record view page.

If you are in doubt, you can always contact the organisation's or record's contact if available or you can simply send an email to services@ardc.edu.au and we will assist you.

To make your record available in Research Data Australia, we do offer two options:

• Publish your collection through your institution (ARDC have an existing engagement with an institution). If the dataset you wish to publish is an output of the work you have done for your institution, then, you may want to collaborate with your data source admin and publish your dataset though the organisation's data source. In this case we can then give you the name and contact details of your organisation's contact person so that you can interact with him/her directly.

• Directly publish a collection as an independent researcher.We currently do not have facility that allows researchers to publish their individual research collection directly to RDA. We can however assist users who may not have any other option in publishing their collection description. As a researcher, you need to have your AAF access ready and then contact services@ardc.edu.au so that we can walk you through the process.

The records available in Research Data Australia are displayed based on how they are sent to us by the providers. ARDC is not responsible for the curation of the records that exist in RDA. If a record contains very limited information, someone who wants to know more can send a request directly to the  provider or the data manager. Contact information is available at the Access section of the record's view page.

We provide best practice guidelines for providing metadata to ARDC and also encourage providers to improve the quality of records available in RDA, however, our rules are not as restrictive except for a number of required elements that must be available before we can publish a record in RDA.

We welcome any feedback, suggestion or comment from our users. Please email services@ardc.edu.au.

A relatedObject will be displayed in RDA preview  if the status of that relatedObject is the same or higher than the record that it relates to (the record being viewed). So, for each status, the following relationships will be displayed in preview.

• Draft record - Draft relatedObjects

• Approved record - Draft and Approved relatedObjects

• Published record - Draft, Approved and Published relatedObjects

Once a record is published in RDA, only published relatedObjects will be displayed in RDA.