The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) (http://neonscience.org) provides open ecological data from over 80 locations across the United States. NEON data cover a wide range of subject areas within ecology, including organismal observations, biogeochemistry, remote sensing, and micrometeorology. Some datasets already span several years of data collection. This workshop will provide an introduction to discovering, accessing and preparing a variety of NEON data for your research, primarily using R. The workshop will be divided into two sections of roughly equal length. (1) The first section will be a code-along guide to NEON data, including (a) discovering and accessing NEON data, via the data portal (http://neondata.org) and the Application Programming Interface (API), (b) understanding the contents and quality of various data packages, and (c) performing common data merges, summarizations, and transformations. Instruction will include guidance in using R packages, including some that have been developed by NEON. (2) In the second half, participants will work with NEON data of their choice, while instructors circulate to answer questions about data and coding. Participants may break into groups based on the data or analyses they wish to explore. For participants who attend the workshop without a specific dataset or analysis of interest, a guided project will be available, analyzing data accessed in the first half of the workshop. Basic familiarity with R is required for participation in the workshop.