I'm a bioinformatics bachelor graduate. The group I'm currently working for does not produce its own data. So I often have to search the literature for available data sets. Luckily, tons of interesting data is now freely accessible over the web - which is really great. However, sometimes data is mentioned in the paper, but not published or the download links do not work anymore.
I noticed that asking other groups for data can be really painful. I usually do not get a reply on my first email to the corresponding author. It does not seem to matter how many details I provide in that email about whom I am working for, what I am intending to do with their data, etc. Putting my supervisor in CC does not seem to help either.
The solution is very simple: After a week or so I ask my supervisor to forward my mail to the authors. The next day I usually have a very polite email with the data attached in my mailbox.
This is annoying in many ways: Firstly, I am waiting quite some time for the data. Moreover, I have to ask my supervisor to write emails for me, which is wasting both his and my time.
I'm quite surprised that some (many?) researchers apparently tend to ignore requests from students.
I'm wondering if this is a common problem and I'm looking for advice about how I can improve my emails to increase the chances of getting a reply.
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