EG5911R Information Literacy Skills for Research (Engineering): Research Data Management

Research Data Management (RDM) is "how you look after your data throughout your project. It covers the planning, collecting, organising, managing, storage, security, backing up, preserving, and sharing your data and ensures that research data are managed according to legal, statutory, ethical and funding body requirements" (Whyte, A. & Tedds, J., 2011).

Good stewardship of research data is necessary to validate the outcomes and maintain the integrity of research results.

The following are some reasons why research data ought to be managed properly: 

• Ensuring research integrity and reproducibility
• Increasing your research efficiency
• Ensuring research data and records are accurate, complete, authentic and reliable
• Saving time and resources in the long run
• Enhancing data security and minimising the risk of data loss
• Preventing duplication of effort by enabling others to use your data
• Complying with practices conducted in industry and commerce
• Facilitating the analysis of change, by providing data with which data at other points in time can be compared
• Meeting funding body grant requirements (if applicable)

Adapted from: https://www.goshen.edu/academics/data-management/

A data management plan (DMP) contains all the information related to managing the data for your project: what data, stored where by whom, how it is looked after and when it is made public. Source: University of Hertfordshire

Planning how you are going to look after your data during your research, share it with your collaborators, and how you're going to preserve it after the project will save you time and money during and after your project. 

When you start your project you should plan to record your decisions, methods and the development process so that when you write up your project in reports, papers, articles, and theses, and when you archive your data for reuse and verification, you have all the information required.