Good data management is fundamental to all stages of the research process & should be established from the outset.
Before a project you should:
Data management plans (DMPs) are simply proposals for how a researcher intends to manage their data both over the course of their project and beyond.
A DMP should outline how data is going to be collected, described, stored, secured, shared & preserved.
By planning data management at the start of a project the researcher can work more efficiently as they have already thought about many of the common problems they might encounter. It helps you anticipate problems, develop management that is commensurate to the particular contexts of your data and eliminate bad things happening in your project/research e.g. data breaches, loss of files or content, inappropriate handling of sensitive or personal data.
The DMP is a living document which should be revisited throughout the projects lifecycle.
At Queen's we recommend that researchers use the DMPonline tool to develop DMPs.
This tool, developed by the Digital Curation Centre, provides a web-based interface for completing DMPs, including bespoke templates for most research funders and accompanying guidance relating to each funder's data policies and requirements. There is also bespoke information about Queen's University Belfast e.g. our repository, data storage system etc.
You can sign in to DMPonline using your Institutional Credentials. Please see video below for details.
Once you have completed a first draft of your DMP, you can contact the RDM Team for further support in enhancing the plan. There is usually a 2-3 week wait. It is usually not possible to review a DMP without notice of at least 7 days. Our email address is: rdm@qub.ac.uk
There may be no additional costs for research data management activity, but for some research projects there will be. Have you estimated how much this will be? Is this factored into your budget? Things like additional storage, transcription services, sofware may incur extra costs. Costing RDM can form part of your DMP. These can include the following:
Some excellent resouces regarding costing can be found below:
UK Data Service - costing tool
We subscribe to a resource call DMPOnline. It is not a Queen's system. But we have a subscription to it. This is run by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) in Edinburgh. Using DMPOnline, you can create, review and share research data management plans that meet institutional and funder requirements. To access this resource, you will first need to register with DMPOnline. Once you have done this, the next time you logon, it will be with your login details. Please see video about how to create data management plan using DMPOnline.
