Data Management

New Research Data Management site:

Boston University Libraries together with Information Services & Technology are developing a new site for Research Data Management. Look to the new site for more detailed information about data management plans, as well as the resources and services of the University to support research data management.

http://www.bu.edu/datamanagement/

Guides to Data Management

The following guides cover general principles for managing your data, plus select information related to particular formats or disciplines.

• Association for Research Libraries
• Australian National Data Service: Data Management for Researchers
• Australian National University: Data Management:
  Information from courses and a manual on data management.
• CIESIN: Geospatial Electronic Records: Resources on managing and preserving geospatial data and related electronic records.
• Changing Role of Libraries in Support of Research Data Activities [PDF] by Deanna Marcum, Karla Strieb, et al. Recap of the public symposium on The Changing Role of Libraries in Support of Research Data Activities organized by the Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI) …
• Data Curation Profiles Toolkit A Data Curation Profile is essentially an outline of the “story” of a data set or collection, describing its origin and lifecycle within a research project. The Profile and its associated Toolkit grew out of an inquiry into the changing environment of scholarly communication, especially the possibility of researchers providing access to data much further upstream than previously imagined.
• How to License Research Data (Data Curation Centre)
  • This guide will help you decide how to apply a licence to your research data, and which licence would be most suitable. It should provide you with an awareness of why licensing data is important, the impact licences have on future research, and the potential pitfalls to avoid. It concentrates on the UK context, though some aspects apply internationally; it does not, however, provide legal advice. The guide should interest both the principal investigators and researchers responsible for the data, and those who provide access to them through a data centre, repository or archive.
• ICPSR Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving (pdf): Outlines best practices throughout the research process, including applying for a research grant, collecting data, and preparing data for deposit in a public archive.
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Best Practices for Preparing Environmental Data Sets to Share and Archive: Describes the practices to make data sets ready to share with others.
• Penn State Data Sharing Pages
• UK Data Archive: Create & Manage Data: Provides best practice strategies and methods for creating, preparing and storing shareable datasets. See also Managing and Sharing Data: a Best Practice Guide for Researchers (pdf).
• UMass Amherst guide to data management.