Paul Myers researchclinic
Henk van Ess on Facebooksearch

Google Tools

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Google Offline
Table Capture for Chrome

Importing PDFs

We extracted data from PDFs, using  CometDocs and OnlineOCR.net. See also this overview of good tools for importing PDFs. CometDocs will solve most needs of PDF extraction while also recognizing special characters in alphabets of different countries. For members of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), CometDocs is free.

DocumentCloud

DocumentCloud is free to use. It’s a good tool for embedding notes in a document, giving readers an opportunity to review the entire document.

OpenRefine

OpenRefine (formerly Google Refine) is a free-to-use powerful tool for working with messy data, cleaning it, and transforming it from one format into another. Here is a good tutorial on OpenRefine.

Data Scraping

The basic version of Helium Scraper, which is a good tool, costs US$100. It is the easiest way to begin scraping, I think. It works on PCs, but not on Macs.

Here you can also find other tools for scraping data from the web.

Google Fusion

Google Fusion is a great mapping tool and free to use in most cases. It’s important to try to get the right version of the map of municipalities in your country and import it as a standard-map into Google Fusion. Below are some good links for working with Fusion:

Search for fusion tables
Your Google drive
List of icons
http://www.diva-gis.org/
Converting shape-files
http://www.december.com/html/spec/colorsafe.html
http://colorbrewer2.org/
Layer Builder

Data Wrapper

Data Wrapper is a very easy tool for making good interactive graphs, but embedding the graphs from the company’s server requires payment.

Instead, you can run them on your own server and use WinSCP as the system for file transfers. WinSCP is free and works on PCs, but not on Macs.

The server can also be used for maps created via Google Fusion, but remember to structure your drives.

CartoDB

CartoDB is a great alternative to Google Fusion with a lot of possibilities to make maps in new ways.

In the free version, it’s possible to upload an unlimited number of maps and tables, however, the total data limit is 50 MB, which is enough in most cases. In the free version, there is limited access to geocoding, which then needs to be done with another tool. Or the newsroom has to acquire at least one paid account.

TimelineJS

TimelineJS is a free, open-source tool that enables users to build visually-rich interactive timelines. It’s available in 40 languages. You can easily build the content in a Google Spreadsheet and then import it to TimelineJS.

Happy data drilling!

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Nils Mulvad is a co-founder and board member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, as well as Investigative Reporting Denmark. He is also editor at Kaas & Mulvad, a data journalism consulting firm and associate professor at the The Danish School of Media and Journalism. He was CEO for the Danish International Center for Analytical Reporting 2001-2006 and European journalist of the year in 2006.