LibGuides: Research Data Services: About Research Data Management

RDM Brief Guide

RDM Brief Guide
This guide presents a set of good data management practices that researchers can adopt, regardless of their data management skills and levels of expertise.

About Research Data Management

Research data management refers to the processes applied through the lifecycle of a research project to guide the collection, documentation, storage, sharing and preservation data resulting from research, scholarship, or other creative works (Tri-Agency, 2021).

Good data management helps you:

Meet requirements and expectations set by funding agencies, publishers and domain associations
Ensure that your data is complete, documented, and accessible to you and to future researchers
Encourage the discovery and reuse of your data to further discoveries in your field of research
Raise the profile and recognition of your research.
Receive credit for your data and increase its impact and visibility

What are Research Data?

Research data describes any materials that have been collected, observed, or created to support original research findings. What materials are considered as research data vary according to research discipline and community.

Digital forms of research data can include:

documents, spreadsheets
laboratory notebooks, field notebooks, diaries
questionnaires, transcripts, codebooks
audiotapes, videotapes
photographs, films
slides, artefacts, specimens, samples
models, algorithms, scripts
contents of an application (input, output, logfiles for analysis software, simulation software, schemas)
methodologies and workflows
standard operating procedures and protocols

Non-digital data such as physical laboratory notebooks, field samples, and sketchbooks are often unique. You should assess the long-term value of any non-digital data and plan how you will describe and retain them.

Intro to Research Data Management

This brief video introduces you to the data lifecycle and the importance of research data management. Further information can be found on the Pathways to Research Data Management Open Science Framework page.

Research Data Lifecycle

The lifecycle of research data often exceeds the time span of the research project responsible for creating it. It is important that data are well managed and curated over the course of a research project in terms of their organization, description, and preservation, so that they can be reused in future research over the long term.

This video reviews the key stages of the research data lifecycle (UK Data Service).