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Applying for data

The Cancer Public Library is requested through the portal's public-data application (공공데이터 신청) and reviewed by the National Cancer Data Center. This page describes that application. Where the approved data are analyzed is on Using the data.

At a glance

  • Who can apply. The principal investigator must be a Korean national living in Korea, and every member who will use the data needs a portal account.
  • Documents. Every application includes a research-use plan, a data specification, and an IRB or DRB approval.
  • Minimum data. Request only the variables the study will use, and attach a research-use plan for restricted items such as one-year age.
  • Timetable. Applications are reviewed in the month after they arrive. Delivery then takes about three months for a customized extract and about one month for a sample.
  • Fees. The data fee starts at 200,000 won for up to 20 GB, and public bodies, universities, and thesis projects qualify for reductions on the other fees.
Sources

This page follows the portal's public-data application page and its English counterpart, data dictionary version 4.0 (September 2026, pages 3–7 of the overview), and the data resource profile by Choi and colleagues,1 which describes what the review committees check.

Who can apply

  • The principal investigator must be a Korean national living in Korea.
  • The principal investigator and everyone who will use the analysis environment must already have a portal account.
  • A thesis project must also register the thesis author.

Documents

Every application attaches three documents:

  • a research-use plan (연구활용계획서),
  • a data specification (데이터 명세서), listing the tables and variables requested, and
  • an IRB or DRB approval (IRB/DRB 승인 확인서).

Using the personal-information innovation zone at the National Cancer Center requires an extra application form, a research-use plan, and a business registration certificate. That zone is handled by the center's data linkage team.

What the committee checks

Two committees review an application: the data-provision review committee (데이터제공심의위원회) and the data-export review committee (데이터반출심사위원회). In principle, only the minimum data needed for the question are released, so request only the variables the study will use. A request for unrelated data can be rejected.

Some items are released only with a research-use plan that justifies them, and some also need committee approval. Examples are one-year age on RGST, three-character mental-illness codes, full drug ingredient codes, and the checkup, screening, and COVID-19 tables. Each dataset page notes its restricted items.

Timetable

Applications received by the last day of a month are reviewed the following month. From the review date, a customized extract takes about three months to deliver, and a sample takes about one month.

Progress appears under 나의연구 (My Research) on the portal and is also sent by email and text message, so the account must allow those messages. A change to an approved study is made through a change request on the same application.

The approval lasts two years from the start of analysis: up to one year of analysis, then up to one year of storage. Using the same data after that requires a new application.

Fees and reductions

The data fee is 200,000 won for a SAS dataset of up to 20 GB, plus 10,000 won for each additional gigabyte, up to 500 GB. The dictionary marks this 200,000 won base fee as not eligible for reductions. The fee for the analysis platform is charged separately and is described on Using the data.

The dictionary also lists reductions on the data and platform fees. Government bodies, public institutions, public health institutions, and researchers under contract to them pay nothing or a reduced fee. A thesis project gets 80 percent off the data fee and 50 percent off the platform fee. Universities, medical institutions, and academic societies also qualify for a reduction. The full table is on page 7 of the dictionary.

Questions about the application, the build, the review, delivery, and payment go to the National Cancer Data Center (data@ncc.re.kr, 031-920-2597).

Other products

The clinical library, combined data, specialized data, and health data each have their own application. A clinical-library request is reviewed by each hospital whose data are requested. A combined extract uses the combined-data application (결합 데이터 신청). Specialized datasets are requested from the hospital that built them. Those routes are sketched on the clinical library, combined library, specialized data, and health data pages.

  1. Choi DW, et al. Data Resource Profile: The Cancer Public Library Database in South Korea. Cancer Research and Treatment. 2024;56(4):1014-1026. doi:10.4143/crt.2024.207 ↩