Updated EDC brief guides on data management topics for researchers

The brief guide series aims to give a starting point to a variety of data management topics

Data Management Checklist

Publicly funded research data are considered to be a public good and should be made openly available with as few restrictions as possible in a timely manner. FAIR data (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) principles are established with an increased emphasis on reproducibility and effective data management planning supports these.

For this data to be useful, both to yourself in the future, potential collaborators and re-users then it needs to be managed from the start of the project within any legal, ethical, and commercial requirements considered and following domain standards and expectations.

Data generated and managed by others should be acknowledged, cited and used under the terms and conditions prescribed.

Data Management Checklist

Submitting data to the EDC

Data needs to have sufficient context for it to be usable by others, this guide establishes what is required when depositing datasets into the EDC. Depositing data into a domain data centre ensures that it can be found and reused by other researchers and it is actively managed for the long-term. Publicly funded research data should be FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) and reproducible.

• Findable: Uniquely identified with good metadata in a searchable resource
• Accessible: Retrievable, with authorisation and authentication if required, or clear if withdrawn.
• Interoperable: Use of standards and vocabularies
• Reusable: Sufficient descriptive metadata, data license and provenance.

For UKERC funded researchers your Data Management Plan will have informed these requirements.

Submitting data to the EDC

Data behind a publication

To support research integrity and Open Research sharing more of the data underpinning journal articles is important. Practices vary over disciplines due to different subject expectations, but the general direction of movement is towards greater open sharing of data. This guidance brings together information on the expectations of journal publishers and the UKRI as a funding body.

Increased visibility of the data can bring benefits to the author as studies have indicated that articles linking to data are cited more.

Data behind a publication

Research software: citation and credit

Software is a key part of the research endeavour, and research software creators should be acknowledged, rewarded and credited. One mechanism for this is software citation.

As a research software creator you can help your software to be cited by formally releasing versions with unique identifiers and telling users how to cite your software by creating README file or a CITATION file stored with the software.

As a research software user you can use citation guidance in READMEs or CITATION files.

Research software: citation and credit

FAIR Data

Enabling your research data to be FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) is good research practice. FAIR is not the same as Open Data. FAIR Data can have restricted access. As a research data creator you can make your data FAIR by depositing data in a repository, providing good quality descriptive metadata , using domain information standards, providing a data license and contextual information.

FAIR Data

Title card photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash