Research Data Management: Introduction

The purpose of this Library guide is to bring together University resources and services to facilitate researchers in the production of high quality data with potential for long-term use.

Research data often have a longer life span than the research project that creates them. Researchers may continue to work with some or all of their data even after project funding has ceased. Follow-up projects may re-analyse existing data or add new data to an existing dataset. Data may, in addition, be re-used or re-purposed by other researchers.

An increasing number of funding bodies request or require that their funding recipients create and follow plans for managing data, storing or preserving it in the long term, and sharing some, or all data products with the public. Funding agencies may require varying degrees of planning and explanation at the bidding stage and will respond more positively to applications that include plans for managing, preserving and sharing their data. 

This guide will assist you in meeting funders’ requirements. It will also be of relevance in terms of increasing your own research efficiency.

The guide is a work-in-progress. Areas to be added in the near future include:

• Relevant books
• Accessing datasets

I would like to gratefully acknowledge the following for their contributions to this guide: 

It can be useful to think of research data in terms of its lifecycle such as this one from the University of Queensland:

This guide has been drawn up with assistance from key areas of the University and links out to pages, where relevant, in these areas:

• UCD Office of Research Ethics
• UCD IT Services (storage and security)
• UCD Innovation (intellectual property, licensing and commercialisation)
• UCD Research (funding bids)
• UCD Library (data management plans, metadata, deposit to a relevant archive, etc.)