Empirical Legal Research Resources

Below is a list of data analytics help and resources available to faculty, students, and staff at Stanford.  These include general resources; specific help with social science, humanities, hard sciences, math, computer science, and geospatial data; and data management services.  Please consult the links provided for specifics on availability and setting up consultations.

General Resources

• Center for Interdisciplinary Digital Research (CIDR) 
  • The Center for Interdisciplinary Digital Research (CIDR) enables digital research and teaching to encourage and inspire innovative scholarship throughout the University. We are a team of humanists and social scientists within the Stanford University Libraries who design and develop new tools and methods, and integrate technology and information resources, to promote scholarship. Our expertise in data discovery, data creation, data management and analytical tools supports the generation and dissemination of new knowledge.
• Data Lab
  • In the Data Lab, students develop their data skills by solving real problems with expert coaching. The problems range from simple challenges to master data fundamentals up to unsolved, high-impact problems for NGOs, government agencies, and other social sector organizations.
• Stanford Libraries Data Services
  • This page provides helpful links to various data tools, instructions, and contact information to help you analyze and preserve your data.

Social Sciences

• Stanford Social Science Data and Software (SSDS) 

  • Social Science Data and Software (SSDS) is a group within the Stanford Libraries that provides services and support to Stanford faculty, staff and students in the acquisition, curation, and preservation of social science data and the selection and use of quantitative (statistical) and qualitative analysis software. SSDS staff members provide these services in a variety of ways that include consulting, workshops and help documentation. We are located in the Social Sciences Resource Center (SSRC) on the first floor of the Green Library Bing Wing.

• Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS)

  • Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS) facilitates first-rate interdisciplinary research, trains the next generation of scholars, and incubates research projects to address critical societal challenges. IRiSS ensures that world-class, evidence-based research is produced to meet evolving problems in areas of governance and democracy, economic inequality, immigration policy, and other social issues that affect communities across the globe.

• Stanford School of Humanities & Sciences: Statistics Dept. 

  • The Department of Statistics offers a free online consulting service to members of the broader research community during each Stanford academic quarter. Under the supervision of a senior faculty member, Statistics graduate students arrange Zoom meetings with clients to help with statistical research questions in areas such as:

    • Experimental design and data acquisition
    • Data exploration, analysis, and interpretation
    • Modeling data and model fitting

    • Statistical inference for estimation, testing, and prediction

• Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis 

  • CESTA's core research groups investigate texts, places, social networks, historical trends, and more. Encompassing the most significant subfields of digital humanities — including text mining, geospatial imaging, digital pedagogy, social network analysis, and media archaeology — CESTA's central labs provide the stable nucleus for the Center's research endeavors.

Math and Computer Science

• Stanford Research Computing Center
  • The Stanford Research Computing Center (SRCC) is a joint effort of the Dean of Research and IT Services to build and support a comprehensive program to advance computational research at Stanford.  That includes offering and supporting traditional high-performance computing (HPC) systems, as well as systems for high throughput and data-intensive computing.  The SRCC also helps researchers transition their analyses and models from the desktop to more capable and plentiful resources, providing the opportunity to explore their data and answer research questions (on-premise or in the cloud) at a scale typically not possible on desktops or departmental servers.  Partnering with units like ICME as well as the NSF XSEDE program and select vendors, the SRCC offers training and learning opportunities around high-end computing tools and technologies. 

• Institute for Computational & Mathematical Engineering: Computational Consulting (C²)

  • Computational questions in research? Need help determining which matrix library to use in your code? Trouble with boundary conditions? We're here to help answer these questions and more. C² is a free service run by the Stanford Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering and offered to all members of the extended Stanford community.

• Sherlock 

  • Need access to compute resources beyond your desktop to support your sponsored or departmental research?  You may want to try out the Stanford Sherlock cluster.  Purchased and supported with seed funding from the Provost, Sherlock comprises 127 compute servers and associated storage.  Those 127 servers are available to run researchers' computational codes and programs, with resources managed through a fair-share algorithm using SLURM as the resource manager/job scheduler. 

• Computer Science Dept.: SAIL Computer Cluster 

  • The Stanford AI Lab cluster aggregates research compute nodes from various groups within the lab and control them via a central batch queueing system that coordinates all jobs running on the cluster. The nodes should not be accessed directly, as the scheduler will allocate resources such as CPU, Memory and GPU exclusively to each job.

Geospatial

• Stanford Geospatial Center 
  • The Stanford Geospatial Center (SGC) provides GIS support and services to all Stanford students, staff, and faculty. Our primary mission is to facilitate the effective use of GIS technology and data across campus. We provide essential GIS training, one-on-one GIS consultations, GIS project and analysis support, GIS data services, and map design and production support.
• David Rumsey Map Center
  • In this collocated environment, scholars can work with original physical items side-by-side with digital surrogates. In digital form, a map can be readily manipulated, enlarged, quantified, aggregated, visualized, and systematically interrogated in a unique way. Working simultaneously with the native format and context (such as a map within an atlas) enriches the information available, giving researchers a chance to embark on discoveries that would otherwise not be possible.

Other

• Stanford Graduate School of Business Library 
  • The Business library has experience helping faculty acquire and analyze large data sets
• Lane Medical Library 
  • Lane offers occassional courses on analyzing data sets that are open to law faculty, staff, and students (see link for examples); faculty, students and staff can access most of Lane's resources using their SUNet ID to login, and reference services are available online, and in person.