Current world lives and breathes data. Scientists, journalists, researchers and data geeks desire an incessant access to thousands of data repositories, containing datasets from various fields. For many years, Google desired to manage commercial information and make it conveniently accessible for those who need it. Now, it targets the scientific community by launching a new search engine called Dataset Search.
New service works alike to well-known search engine for academic studies- Google Scholar. It allows for finding datasets regardless of their source. They can come from personal sites, publishers’ web pages or digital libraries. By following pre-described guidelines for dataset providers, institutions can publish their data and use meta tags to indicate its characteristics. Such specification allows Google and other search engines to better understand sets and their content. Next, Google analyzes and links the dataset to different versions of the same dataset. Indexed information is later added to Google’s Knowledge Graphs, which maps the relation between datasets. Even though Dataset Search contains now mostly datasets from environmental and social fields of studies, the topical diversity is expected to expand. Additionally, the new engine is relatively intuitive and easy to use. A user looks for a desired content by stating a query, which specifies the search attributes.
Who is invited to share its datasets? Generally speaking everyone who would like to share their data! Natasha Noy, a research scientists at Google AI, underlines that both large and small dataset providers can contribute ecosystem of standardized, unified, accessible and robust collection. The engine eases the datasets search, resolved the problem of their fragmentation and foster scientific enrichment.
Dataset Search is a beta version, thus it still requires testing and some improvements, especially when it comes to data filtration and reliability. Nevertheless, in my opinion it is a promising project, which, if successful, may became a powerful tool used not only by scientific community and journalists, but also academia and students to conduct research. I look forward to the exciting future of the product.
References:
1. https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/5/17822562/google-dataset-search-service-scholar-scientific-journal-open-data-access
2. https://www.blog.google/products/search/making-it-easier-discover-datasets/
3. https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/google-dataset-search-engine-launched-for-researchers-and-data-journalists-5126011.html
