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Research Data Management
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Data management plans
Managing your data
Documentation & metadata
Documentation & metadata
Questions your documentation or metadata should answer
Best practices
Metadata standards
Storage
Sharing & Preservation
Reproducibility and Replicability
Tools & software
Security
Citing data
Electronic Lab Notebooks
NIH Data Guidance Update 2023
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Documentation & metadata
Why document data? Metadata is useful for:
Finding data from other researchers to support your research
Using the data that you find
Helping others both find & use data from your research
Understanding and using your own data in the future
Questions your documentation or metadata should answer
Who collected the data?
Who or what were the subjects under study?
What data were collected, for what purpose?
What is the content & structure of the data?
Where was the data collected?
What were the experimental conditions that produced it?
When was the data collected?
Are the data part of a series, or ongoing experiment?
Why was this experiment performed?
How do the data relate to your research question?
Best practices
Keep a data dictionary or codebook
Always use an established metadata standard
Extract pre-existing metadata
Consistent data entry is important
Use templates and macros when possible
Avoid extraneous punctuation
Avoid most abbreviations
Consult with a librarian
Metadata standards
Disciplinary metadata standards from the Digital Curation Centre (UK)
Metadata standards list from Wikipedia
Metadata schema list from Tulane University Library
Research data alliance metadata standards directory
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