Training kit for librarians who wish to gain confidence and understanding of research data management, based on open educational materials, covering five topics:
- Data management planning
- Organising & documenting data
- Data storage & security
- Ethics & copyright
- Data sharing
The kit uses the Research Data Mantra online course and selected exercises from the UK Data Archive. It further contains a training schedule, podcasts for short talks, presentation slides, evaluation forms, data curation profiles and reflective writing questions based on the experience of academic librarians who have taken the course.
Data Curation Profiles provide a complete framework for interviewing a researcher in any discipline about their research data and their data management practices.
After completing this unit you will:
▪ Be able to distinguish between various types of research data.
▪ Recognise the importance of managing research materials.
▪ Be aware of challenges presented by data in society.
▪ Understand the need for data science and data literacy.
▪ Understand why research data formatting and transformation is important.
▪ Know how to make decisions about data file formatting, compression, normalisation and other transformations.
▪ Use the information featured in the course to improve your research data management practice.
▪ Understand what sensitive data are
▪ Understand what data protection laws are and how they apply to research data
▪ Understand what types of research will be subject to ethical review
▪ Understand what consent documentation is appropriate to ensure you meet your ethical and legal obligations
▪ Understand the key aspects of data management needed to safeguard sensitive data
▪ Understand where to find appropriate data protection training
▪ Understand the basic principles of research data management and the key role that data management plays in the responsible conduct of research.
▪ Consider your research in terms of the research data lifecycle and be able to plan ahead to prepare for potential data management pitfalls.
▪ Know about the data management planning requirements of different research funders.
▪ Be aware of data management planning tools, support and guidance which are available to academic researchers.
▪ Be able to use the information in this unit to develop a data and software management plan, and to maintain it through the course of your research.
▪ Understand why documenting your research data is important, and why documentation is important for future users of the data.
▪ Know why and when to use metadata.
▪ Understand the importance of citing data, and how to do it.
▪ Know how to protect your data by taking adequate precautions.
▪ Be aware of the options available to you to safely store your data.
▪ Recognise the importance of data backups.
▪ Understand password safety guidelines.
▪ Know how to encrypt and destroy sensitive data when required.