Creation, (re)use and discovery of research data often follows a predictable flow, suggesting a “lifecycle” of research data. Locating needed social science data in most currently available archive catalogs is suboptimal as they do not provide searching functions that align with how researchers seek specific data. Exposing and indexing the holdings of data archives and publications in standardized metadata formats could enable web-scale discovery through new cross-collection search engine functions built to exploit that metadata.