FAQ
Welcome to the Data Rescue Project! We are excited to have you join us.
What is the Data Rescue Project?
The Data Rescue Project is a grassroots volunteer community dedicated to access to public data for the public good. We enable rapid response efforts for at-risk public data grounded in recognized data stewardship principles. We partner with allied communities of data creators, carers, and their organizations to advocate for sustainable data access.
I'm worried about a specific dataset that isn't open to the public or contains sensitive information, such as NLEAD, PRAMS, HCUP, etc. Can the Data Rescue Project help?
There are many federal data sources that contain administrative, sensitive, identifiable, and/or restricted information. While this data is very important and may be at risk, legally, we are unable to collect or preserve this data. If you are concerned about losing access to an administrative or restricted federal dataset, please contact either your university's library, university's office of sponsored research, or a relevant government official.
How do I join the Data Rescue Project?
If you’d like to follow our work, please click Subscribe to receive our newsletter or follow our BlueSky account or our LinkedIn account.
As of April 2026, we have temporarily paused recruiting new volunteers. We are in the process of updating and streamlining our workflows, which will make it easier to get involved. Follow our social media and newsletter to receive the updates later in Summer 2026!
How can I help?
Regardless of your background or level of comfort with data, there are a number of tasks and projects underway, all requiring different skills and expertise. Check out our Getting Started with the Data Rescue Project page for more guidance on the tasks below.
Examples of potential tasks:
- Identifying data for download. You can nominate datasets or really any links on our Nominations Tool.
- Finding and confirming alternate locations of federal data
- Downloading data from federal resources
- Uploading data into Data Lumos
- Research assistance or answering reference questions
- Creating and updating inventories
- Identifying potential Data Rescue Project collaborators
- Submit metadata about the data your organization has rescued to our Data Rescue Project Portal using our Metadata Submission Form.
- Troubleshooting technical issues
- Review metadata and links for quality control using our Data Rescue Project Portal (if you prefer the spreadsheet view, check out the OG Tracker).
- Data curation, metadata, and data documentation
- And more!
How do I nominate a governmental digital object for rescue (datasets, webpages, etc)?
You can use our Nominations Tool to nominate digital objects you are concerned about. We will investigate the submission and decide if we have the capacity to take it on or if we will need to partner with another organization.
How do I get in touch?
You can email us at datarescueproject@protonmail.com. If you want to send us a secure, encrypted email, you can sign up for a free account at protonmail.com or use our public PGP key: https://keys.openpgp.org/search?q=datarescueproject%40protonmail.com.