Data Curation - Why should you care?
"By learning how to preserve and share digital materials so others can effectively reuse them, you will maximise the impact of your research" (Digital Curation Centre)
Data that you generate with or for your research should be available to other researchers to help verify and advance your work. By becoming a good steward of your data, you will have a framework in place to help you keep track of your data, your data will be citable, you can help your graduate students achieve their goals quicker, and you will be helping future researchers in your field of study.
Image from DataONE
A data management plan is a document that outlines a researcher's management strategies and policies for data produced by his or her research project.
Increasingly, if you are applying for a grant, government agencies and private foundations require data management plans and provisions. One of the biggest federal funding agencies is the National Science Foundation (NSF), which began requiring DMPs in 2011. As of 2016, most federal grant-funding agencies require a data management plan. View this summary of which federal agencies require DMPs from the University of Minnesota.
Utilize the library's resources to help you with data management and planning. Ask your subject specialist to review your DMP in order to make it stronger and more effective. When doing so, be sure to identify the specific funding agency to which you are applying, and provide contextual information about the scope of the research project as a whole. The library's Research Data Services also offers guidance on data organization and management, sharing, discovery and access, preservation, and visualization.
This guide is based on Data Management Plans (ENG) by Paul Grochowski, Leena Lalwani and Sara Samuel. For further information contact Shevon Desai, Jennifer Nason Davis or Jungwon Yang.