UC Library Guides: Open Access Toolkit: Data Management

Data Management Plans

A Data Management Plan is a formal document you create at the start of your project which describes all aspects of your data.

It allows you to document your strategy for managing your research data. It reflects your data management decisions and can also be used to record questions and items for action. It's a living document and can be updated as your project develops and your data management strategy is refined.

If you are working in a team, a data management plan can be used to document individual responsibilities and make sure everyone has a shared understanding. It is also a useful document for reporting to funding bodies.

Creating a data management plan can help you better prepare for your research at the beginning of a project, but it's never too late in the research lifecycle to document a plan.

The main components of a data management plan:

Context - project details and purpose, funding and partners
Data collection - what kind of data and how will it be collected, is it to be created or other data reused and built upon
Related policies - funding body requirements, institutional or research group guidelines
Responsibilities - roles and responsibilities as a researcher and for implementing this plan
Adherence - the who, when & how will adherence to this plan be reviewed
Data organisation & file formats - file & folder structure, naming conventions, file formats, versioning & file transformation
Documentation & metadata - e.g. lab notebooks, protocols, software syntax, data dictionaries, database schema, data provenance etc.
Storage & security - responsibilities, back-ups, access & security arrangements
Data protection & rights - IP rights, ethical & privacy issues
Preservation sharing & licensing - maintaining, curating, archiving, preserving & disposing plans for the data

The University of Adelaide have created a good example of a Data Management Plan template

Research Data Resources

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Data Archive This link opens in a new window
This node of the Australian Data Archive (ADA) manages the collection and storage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research data
AODN Portal (Australian Ocean Data Network) This link opens in a new window
Provides access to all available Australian marine and climate science data and provides the primary access to IMOS data (Integrated Marine Observing System).
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) This link opens in a new window
The Statistics section of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) website gives you access to the full range of ABS statistical and reference information
Australian Data Archive (ADA) This link opens in a new window
A national service for the collection and preservation of research data relating to social, political and economic affairs. Consists of seven sub archives: Social Science, Historical, Indigenous, Longitudinal, Qualitative, Crime & Justice and International.
ChemSpider: search and share chemistry This link opens in a new window
A free chemical structure database providing fast text and structure search access to over 29 million structures from hundreds of data sources
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere This link opens in a new window
A central assembly and management point for much of the Division's vessel-collected (ship) data collected over the past 25+ years, plus related datasets such as those collected via moored instrument arrays (moorings) in the Australasian region.
Dryad Digital Repository This link opens in a new window
A curated resource that makes the data underlying scientific publications discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. Dryad provides a general-purpose home for a wide diversity of datatypes

Figshare
Allows researchers to publish all of their data in a citable, searchable and sharable manner. All data is persistently stored online under the most liberal Creative Commons licence, waiving copyright where possible. This allows scientists to access and share the information from anywhere in the world with minimal friction

GenBank (NCBI) This link opens in a new window
The NIH genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences
Geological Society of America Data Repository This link opens in a new window
A data repository for supplemental information for authors of articles in Geological Society of America journals
GigaScience/GigaDB This link opens in a new window
An integrated database and journal that publishes biological and biomedical research datasets that are affiliated with BioMed Central in collaboration with BGI, DataCite, BioSharing, and ISA-Tab.
GovPond This link opens in a new window
Searches data.gov.au and State Government data sites including South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, and the ACT. It also searches a variety of other Australian public sector data catalogues, including Landgate's SLIP, the Australian Spatial Data Directory, the Australian Data Archive (social sciences data), Western Australian Department of Mines and Petroleum, and other Western Australian resources. Also provides options to search technical and scientific catalogues such as CSIRO and the Australian Ocean Data Network
Journal of Open Psychology Data This link opens in a new window
The Journal of Open Psychology Data (JOPD) features peer reviewed data papers describing psychology datasets with high reuse potential
National Archive of Crime & Justice This link opens in a new window
US database of research data in criminal justice and criminology.
National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) This link opens in a new window
Advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information.
National Centers for Environmental Information (USA) This link opens in a new window
Hosts and provides public access to one of the most significant archives for environmental data on Earth with over 20 petabytes of comprehensive atmospheric, coastal, oceanic, and geophysical data.
Open Access Directory (OAD) - Data This link opens in a new window
A multidisplinary list of repositories and databases for open data.
PANGAEA This link opens in a new window
An open access library aimed at archiving, publishing and distributing georeferenced data from earth system research
PubChem (NCBI) This link opens in a new window
A public repository for chemical compound screening and assay data
r3data.org: REgistry of REsearch REpositories This link opens in a new window
(Previously DataBib.) Largest and most comprehensive registry of data repositories available on the web, lists over 1,700 repositories, over 70 are Australian. Browse by subject area.
RCSB Protein Data Bank This link opens in a new window
Repository of information about the 3D structures of large biological molecules, including proteins and nucleic acids. The structures in the archive range from tiny proteins and bits of DNA to complex molecular machines like the ribosome.
Research Data Australia This link opens in a new window
The flagship service of the Australian National Data Service (ANDS), provides a comprehensive window into the Australian Research Data Commons

Scientific Data
Scientific Data is an open-access, online-only publication for descriptions of scientifically valuable datasets, and exists to help you publish, discover and reuse research data.

UK Data Service This link opens in a new window
UK social and economic data
UN Data This link opens in a new window
Open access data on topics such as crime, the environment, gender, and health. Data can be sorted by country and date.
World Bank Open Data This link opens in a new window
Free and open access to data about development in countries around the globe

Is This You & Your Data? (video)

Data Management Resources

MANTRA
MANTRA is an online course designed for researchers or others planning to manage digital data as part of the research process.
23 (research data) Things
Self-paced online course designed to build your understanding of research data and its potential.
DataONE
Data management modules, webinars and best practice information.
New England Collaborative Data Management Curriculum
NECDMC is an instructional tool for teaching data management best practices to undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers in the health sciences, sciences, and engineering disciplines.
Managing & sharing data : best practices for researchers
UK Data Archive
Data Management Manual
(ANU, 2011)
Highlights key aspects of data management and writing a plan.
Data Management Planning
(QUT, 2010)
Guidelines for management of research data.
Data Management Planning
(Monash Uni., 2009)
Includes a draft checklist for HDR students.
Data Management Planning
Australian National Data Service (ANDS)
Data Management Checklist
(UK Data Archive, n.d.)
Questions to ensure good data practices.
Data Management Plan Checklist V4.0
(DCC, 2013)
Provides guidance and questions to consider when creating a data management plan

How To Cite Datasets & Link To Publications

How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications
Created by the Digital Curation Centre (UK) This guide will help you create links between your academic publications and the underlying datasets, so that anyone viewing the publication will be able to locate the dataset and vice versa. It provides a working knowledge of the issues and challenges involved, and of how current approaches seek to address them. This guide should interest researchers and principal investigators working on data-led research, as well as the data repositories with which they work.
How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications - PDF version

Open Access Toolkit

Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research

Research Grant Applications & Data Management

Copyright & Data

Data Management Plans

Research Data Resources

Is This You & Your Data? (video)

Data Management Resources

How To Cite Datasets & Link To Publications