Introduction

This chapter explores research data management (RDM), an area of growing importance within research support and one which is a good fit with the existing librarian skill set. For those thinking of moving into research support, being able to offer advice to researchers on how to collect, store and share their information makes the ideal first step. Librarians from all backgrounds are confident in their information organisation skills and RDM offers an excellent way to extend this into research support roles. Data management runs through the whole project research lifecycle, from the planning stage to managing and publishing. As there are new funder requirements for sharing accompanying data after a project, extra attention must be paid to preparing data for others to use in their work.

The chapter outlines what we mean when we talk about research data, considers how it can be organised and stored securely, and discusses ethical considerations to be considered and how to prepare data for sharing. It concludes with a look at the importance of creating a data management plan (DMP) – a living document which draws all of these areas together. The chapter includes a practical exercise, which aims to teach researchers about the value of metadata using Lego. First we must establish what we actually mean by the term ‘research data’.

What is research data?

Or should that be what are research data? The word data is the plural of datum – a single unit of information – although the plural is much more widely used. Data is any information that is gathered, whether it is numeric in nature (quantitative data) or information that cannot be measured by numbers (qualitative data). It is collected by individuals and organisations all over the world in many forms for various reasons – governments look at information on how many people are entering the workforce, businesses analyse their sales data and universities measure student satisfaction rates.

Research data is one example of this wealth of knowledge and is simply information that is used and produced during the process of research. This could be anything from documents a historical researcher uses to results produced by a scientific experiment.