Research Data Management

•    Show you how to comply with public access funder mandates and journal data sharing requirements
•    Help you write data management and sharing plans as required by many grants, including the use of DMPTool
•    Assist you in identifying and using data repositories to preserve and share your data
•    Help with metadata and documentation to make your data searchable and citable, to ensure your work can be found and credited
•    Our Research Data Management Blog, RDM@Creighton, can keep you up to date on new webinars, trainings, and resources

From the perspective of research data management, it is perhaps most useful to think of data as everything that would be needed to reproduce a given scientific output. It is important to recognize that data goes beyond spreadsheets of numbers. Data can take many forms: biospecimens, video recordings, images, software programs, algorithms, paper lab notebooks. (Surkis & Read, 2015)

Research Data Management refers to the practices of organizing, documenting, storing, sharing, and preserving data gathered during a research project.

Effective management of data includes:
•    File organization 
•    Documentation and version control 
•    Storage and access for security and collaboration
•    Archiving and preservation for future accessibility
•    Policies for sharing and reuse

(Adapted from Texas A&M University Libraries) 

•    Meet funder and publisher requirements
•    Organized data saves time
•    Increases the impact of your research through data citation
•    Clearly documents and provides evidence for your research in conjunction with published results
•    Meets copyright and ethical compliance (ie. HIPAA)
•    Preserves data for long-term access and prevents loss of data
•    Describes and shares data with others to further new discoveries and research
•    Ensures project continuity through researcher or staff changes
•    Reduces risk of lost, stolen, or misused data

(Adapted from Texas A&M University Libraries, Princeton University Library, Northwestern Libraries) 

(JISC Research Data Lifecycle, CC BY-ND)