Data Management and Curation

In the spring of 2011, the UNC-Chapel Provost formed the Task Force on the Stewardship of Digital Research Data and charged its members with exploring the implications of data management for the University and making recommendations for University policy.  The Task Force investigated the data management landscape through research in the literature, conversations with faculty and staff, and an in-depth faculty survey designed and administered by the Odum Institute.  The resulting report was submitted to administrators in mid-February 2012 with recommendations for university policies and procedures.  While the recommendations specific to UNC have been redacted, the rest of the report is now publicly available.  Although the main body of the report reiterates material with which many in IASSIST will already be familiar, the appendices may be of interest.  Appendix 5 provides the interview questions for the group’s initial case studies of how faculty manage their research data, some of which are profiled in the text of the report.  Appendix 6 provides the instrument for the faculty survey; and Appendix 7 presents the summarized results of the survey, with a total of 2,765 respondents.

An online training course, designed to be used with a face to face component, to introduce and familiarise librarians with research data management, developed by 3TU.Datacentrum, a consortium of 3 institutions in Delft, the Netherlands.

Topics include data management (skills), technical skills, and acquisitions and advice.

Available in English; up to date as of this entry in March 2012.

http://dataintelligence.3tu.nl/en/home/

Our Managing and Sharing Data: Training Resources present a suite of flexible training materials for people who are charged with training researchers and research support staff in how to look after research data.

The Training Resources are modularised following the UK Data Archive's seven key areas of managing and sharing data:

• sharing data - why and how
• data management planning for researchers and research centres
• documenting data
• formatting data
• storing data, including data security, data transfer, encryption, and file sharing
• ethics and consent
• data copyright

Each section contains:

• introductory powerpoint(s)
• presenter's guide - where necessary
• exercises and introduction to exercises
• quizzes
• answers

The materials are presented as used in our own training courses  and are mostly geared towards social scientists.

You can download individual modules from the relevant sections or download the whole resource in pdf format.

The Research Data Management Training, or MANTRA project has produced an open, online training course for PhD and early career researchers to learn best practices in data management.

In addition to the interactive, online module which covers data management topics such as Organising Your Data, there are downloadable software modules covering data handling skills in SPSS, R, NVivo and ArcGIS.

The resource was created by EDINA and Data Library, University of Edinburgh, and was funded by the JISC Managing Research Data programme.

The Irish Qualitative Data Archive: Best Practice in Archiving Qualitative Data (PDF) handbook is intended to introduce the researcher and data curator to the issues they need to consider when developing an archiving strategy appropriate to their qualitative data set. The guidelines apply principally to textual data that have been generated in qualitative research projects.

The Penn State University Libraries Data Management Toolkit provides resources to help orient teaching and research faculty, as well as undergraduate and graduate students, around the topic of data management planning. While some sections are dedicated specifically to PSU students, faculty and staff, a large majority of the toolkit may be used generally by the public and offers great information on data management, planning, and sharing. The site also provides links to other institutions and organizations that offer resources on similar topics.

Developed by the Purdue University Libraries, the Data Management Plan: Self-Assessment Questionnaire (PDF) is designed to assist researchers in constructing a data management plan for their National Science Foundation (NSF) proposals.

UVA Scientific Data Consulting provides guidance on the concepts behind data planning and a general template for writing National Science Foundation (NSF) data management plans. In addition to planning, the guide includes a section on data citation.

UCSD Research Cyberinfrastructure: Data Management Planning contains resources, examples, and links to guides on writing a data management plan. Strong National Science Foundation (NSF) focus.

The University of Wisconsin's Research Data Services has a strong focus on National Science Foundation (NSF) DMP requirements, but also contains general guidelines for data sharing and contents of data management plans.