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Research Data Management

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Making your Data do More

Scientific research often revolves around dealing with data. This could be analysing existing data for new insights, tracking down data in publications or online databases, or creating entirely new data sets through lab, clinic and field work. It’s the data that helps you test hypotheses and provides the supporting evidence for conclusions in published papers and theses.

Graphic of various graphs and charts showing different data

Data comes in many forms

Data comes in all different forms from DNA sequences and mass spectrometer readings to interviews with patients, software code and rock samples. Whatever the data, making sure you have good systems in place to manage that data can help ensure that your data is :

Safe – keeping backups and storing data securely can help prevent loss of vital research and avoid running into legal problems when dealing with sensitive data.

Reusable – making sure that data is well documented and in standardised formats can ensure that it continues to be meaningful and reusable by yourself and others.

Shared – Although not all research data can be shared, making data available in online repositories and archives can help speed up scientific research and save money by removing the need to recreate existing data sets and allowing others to analyse data in new and different ways.

Preserved – Archiving data in repositories can ensure that data being generated now can be fully available to the scientists of the future.

Reliable – Data management can improve confidence in the reliability of data and help to demonstrate ethical research practice and research reproducibility.

Citable – Just like a journal article, a dataset can be cited. By sharing and making data sets citable you’ll get credit and recognition for data as another valuable research output in its own right.

Research data management helps you embed sound data management practices into your work. However, getting started can be a bit daunting. Fortunately, the University of Oxford provides you with a whole range of support in this area.

Working together, the Bodleian Libraries, IT Services, Research Services and other groups around the University provide the resources, tools, information and training you need. To help provide guidance to researchers, the University has recently published its latest University of Oxford Research Data Management Policy. This policy is supported by the redeveloped Research Data Oxford (RDO) website which now offers improved access to all the information you need about research data management at the University.

If you’re new to research data management, start here for a gentle and friendly introduction – https://researchdata.ox.ac.uk/new-start-here. Or, even quicker, you can watch the one minute introduction to Research Data Management below.

Still got questions? No problem! We have a dedicated team that can answer research data management questions – researchdata@ox.ac.uk

Where is your data?

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Research data management logoScientific research projects are underpinned by data built up during the project or collected together from previous research. In many cases this data will provide the evidence for the conclusions drawn from the project and will form the basis of theses and scientific papers. But what happens to all this data when the thesis has been submitted or the paper published? Would other researchers benefit from being able to access the data you have collected?  How will the data be stored safely for the future?

Questions such as these have become increasingly important for researchers as funders increasingly expect investigators to submit detailed data management plans with funding applications. Other funders are placing more requirements on researchers to ensure that their data is preserved and properly described for future reuse and sharing.

Good research data management will help you organise the data you are creating in your project and help you with practical activities such as backing up data securely, handling licensing or ethical issues that arise with the data you are collecting and arranging the long-term archiving of your data in a suitable repository.

Oxford University is providing information, training and infrastructure to ensure that researchers can plan their data management activities and ensure that data is accessible during and after your project. An updated and improved Research Data Management website has been created which you can use to –

  • Learn about data management
  • Locate useful tools and guides for different data management tasks
  • Find training courses on data managment
  • Contact the Research Data Management support team with any questions

You can visit the new site here – http://researchdata.ox.ac.uk/

Research data management services and information at Oxford University are being provided through a collaboration of IT Services, Research Services and the Bodleian Libraries.