Research Data Australia is a flagship service of the Australian National Data Services (ANDS) and provides a national and comprehensive window into the Australian Research Data Commons.

This discovery service provides rich connections between data, projects, researchers and institutions, and promotes visibility of Australian research data collections. 70 Australian universities, research institutions and government data producing agencies have contributed over 55,000 data collections to Research Data Australia (mid 2013). 

Users can search by subject area, geographic location, topics or browse to find: research data collections; researchers or organisations; data created by projects; and services that support the creation of use of research datasets or collections.  Searching by subject area uses the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC) which was developed by the Australian Government to meet the dual needs for a comprehensive description of today's research environment, as well as the ability to compare R&D statistics internationally. A specific strength of RDA is the Tropical Research Data topic page which brings together collections, contributors, and related services, activities and additional links.

ANDS also has reciprocal publishing arrangements with other data collection registries and discovery portals in Australia and internationally.

ANDS is funded by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) and the Education Investment Fund (EIF) Super Science Initiative.