Reporting on this event: Research data clinics – 30th October

Yesterday’s visit by Sarah Jones and Marieke Guy from the DCC gave a dozen or so Northampton researchers the chance to find out a bit more about the benefits and challenges of managing research data.

In her introductory talk, Marieke addressed the basic questions of what is research data management, why is it important to manage data well and what is involved?  For each stage of the data management process – planning, creating, documenting, storing, sharing and preserving data – Marieke suggested questions that the researcher might ask and pointed to sources of advice for answering them.

Sarah followed up with a summary of the policy context and services for research data management at Northampton.   In a nutshell, the university expects researchers to follow RCUK recommendations for good research practice, to write and follow a data management plan, and make data accessible upon completion of the research.

Sarah introduced the audience to the data management planning tool DMPonline.  We will be working with colleagues at the DCC to develop further the university’s DMPonline template so that guidelines and examples are specific to Northampton researchers’ needs. If you would like to have some input into this process then please do get in touch.

In the remainder of her presentation’ Sarah described some of the options available to university researchers for storing their data and highlighted the sources of support here.

Presentations:

• What is Research Data Management and why does it matter?
• Research Data Management at the University of Northampton

Either side of the introductory talks, Sarah and Marieke offered one-to-one appointments to researchers at both Avenue and Park campuses to discuss issues of concern to individuals.  It was fascinating to hear about the different data challenges faced by researchers and very much reinforced our notion that when it comes to research data management one size definitely doesn’t fit all.
Sarah clearly found the experience as useful as the participants because she is now planning to use this approach in other institutional engagements (see her post on the DCC blog).

Image credit: Jeremy Wilburn on Flickr