It took me hours of hunting derelict stations to get my 2500 units of sci-data. First person to send me a Dominos Pizza to my house.... I will give 200 sci units for it.
Perhaps something similar to codename wrecks could be implemented. Once, per player, per day, yielding 1 data from each site, with these sites being placed in newly fresh, random locations within certain regions, each day, with roughly 8-20 data in each relevant system.
Perhaps these could also become an extremely rare commodity to be carried by NPC convoys, which would carry small amounts of 1-10 data, with the probability of encountering such convoys being extremely rare, even in the systems they would occur in.
Perhaps scientific data could also be awarded in small amounts of 5 units to players simply for participation in events.