Date: 2025-11-05

# 2. Data Search and Discovery

#### 2025-11-05

Searching for data within Dataverse is quite easy using the `dataverse_search()` function. The simplest searches simply consist of a query string:

    library("dataverse")
    Sys.setenv("DATAVERSE_SERVER" = "dataverse.harvard.edu")
    dataverse_search("Gary King")[c("name")]

    ##                                                                name
    ## 1                         004_informal_food_retail_Nigeria_2018.tab
    ## 2              00592Belle-Stress-PaperData-Subject_King_ChildIs.PDF
    ## 3               00592Belle-Stress-PaperData-Subject_King_ChildO.PDF
    ## 4               00592Belle-Stress-PaperData-Subject_King_Coping.PDF
    ## 5       00592Belle-Stress-PaperData-Subject_King_Discrimination.PDF
    ## 6               00592Belle-Stress-PaperData-Subject_King_LifeCs.PDF
    ## 7                00592Belle-Stress-PaperData-Subject_King_LifeE.PDF
    ## 8  00592Belle-Stress-PaperData-Subject_KingAndMeunier_Parenting.PDF
    ## 9                             00698McArthur-King-BoxCoverSheets.pdf
    ## 10                           00698McArthur-King-MemoOfAgreement.pdf

The results are paginated, so users can rely upon the `per_page` and `start` argument to requested subsequent pages of results. We’ll start at 6 and to show that we retrieve the last five results from the previous query plus 15 more (due to `per_page = 20`):

    dataverse_search("Gary King", start = 6, per_page = 20)[c("name")]

    # 10 of 3676 results retrieved
    ##                                                                                                                   name
    ## 1                                                                            004_informal_food_retail_Nigeria_2018.tab
    ## 2                                                                                00698McArthur-King-BoxCoverSheets.pdf
    ## 3                                                                               00698McArthur-King-MemoOfAgreement.pdf
    ## 4                                                                              00698McArthur-King-StudyDescription.pdf
    ## 5  01 ReadMe Unlocking history through automated virtual unfolding of sealed documents imaged by X-ray microtomography
    ## 6                                           01_ReadMe_The_Spiral_Locked_Letters_of_Elizabeth_I_and_Mary_Queen_of_Scots
    ## 7                                     03 Brienne Collection letterlocking data: Images folder 02/16, DB-0874_2–DB-0903
    ## 8                                    03 Brienne Collection letterlocking data: Images folder 04/16, DB-0988–DB-1109_03
    ## 9                                 03 Brienne Collection letterlocking data: Images folder 06/16, DB-1241_02–DB-1339_06
    ## 10                                03 Brienne Collection letterlocking data: Images folder 08/16, DB-1455_02–DB-1564_01

More complicated searches can specify metadata fields like `title` and restrict results to a specific `type` of Dataverse object (a “dataverse”, “dataset”, or “file”):

    ei <- dataverse_search(author = "Gary King", title = "Ecological Inference", type = "dataset", per_page = 20)
    # fields returned
    names(ei)
    # names of datasets
    ei$name

    ##  [1] "name"                    "type"                    "url"                     "global_id"
    ##  [5] "description"             "published_at"            "publisher"               "citationHtml"
    ##  [9] "identifier_of_dataverse" "name_of_dataverse"       "citation"                "storageIdentifier"
    ## [13] "keywords"                "subjects"                "fileCount"               "versionId"
    ## [17] "versionState"            "majorVersion"            "minorVersion"            "createdAt"
    ## [21] "updatedAt"               "contacts"                "authors"                 "publications"
    ##  [1] "01 ReadMe Unlocking history through automated virtual unfolding of sealed documents imaged by X-ray microtomography"
    ##  [2] "01_ReadMe_The_Spiral_Locked_Letters_of_Elizabeth_I_and_Mary_Queen_of_Scots"
    ##  [3] "03 Brienne Collection letterlocking data: Images folder 02/16, DB-0874_2–DB-0903"
    ##  [4] "03 Brienne Collection letterlocking data: Images folder 04/16, DB-0988–DB-1109_03"
    ##  [5] "03 Brienne Collection letterlocking data: Images folder 06/16, DB-1241_02–DB-1339_06"
    ##  [6] "03 Brienne Collection letterlocking data: Images folder 08/16, DB-1455_02–DB-1564_01"
    ##  [7] "03 Brienne Collection letterlocking data: Images folder 12/16, DB-1868–DB-1963_03"
    ##  [8] "03 Brienne Collection letterlocking data: Images folder 14/16, DB-2064_01–2155_03"
    ##  [9] "03 Spiral-lock figures"
    ## [10] "07 Letterlocking Categories and Formats Chart"
    ## [11] "10 Foldable: Launch Little Book of Locks (UH6089), with Categories and Formats Chart. Letterlocking Instructional Resources"
    ## [12] "10 Million International Dyadic Events"
    ## [13] "1479 data points of covid19 policy response times"
    ## [14] "2016 Census of Population: ADA and DA Maps for Kings County Nova Scotia"
    ## [15] "3D Dust map from Green et al. (2015)"
    ## [16] "3D dust map from Green et al. (2017)"
    ## [17] "3D dust map from Green et al. (2019)"
    ## [18] "A 1D Lyman-alpha Profile Camera for Plasma Edge Neutral Studies  on the DIII-D Tokamak"
    ## [19] "A Comparative Analysis of Brazil's Foreign Policy Drivers Towards the USA: Comment on Amorim Neto (2011)"
    ## [20] "A Critique of Dyadic Design"
    ## 16                                                             1998 Jewish Community Study of the Coachella Valley, California
    ## 17                                                                                               2002 State Legislative Survey
    ## 18                                                                          2007 White Sands Dune Field lidar topographic data
    ## 19                                                                          2008 White Sands Dune Field lidar topographic data
    ## 20                                                                                                         2012 STATA Data.tab

Once datasets and files are identified, it is easy to download and use them directly in R. See the “Data Download” vignette for details.