Research Data Management
Good data management planning and practices are essential in research. There is growing awareness of the value of managing, sharing, and preserving research data. The Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy recognizes that sound research data management is an essential part of research excellence (Government of Canada, 2021). Dalhousie has approved an Institutional Research Data Management Strategy.
Data Planning Tools
DMP Assistant: The DMP Assistant is a freely available tool to Canadian researchers to help you develop a good data management plan for your project. Developed by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries Portage Network, this tool will walk you step-by-step through a series of questions to create a data management plan.
Research Data Management Subject Guide: The data management guide contains information about data management planning such as data repositories including Dataverse, metadata standards and best practices.
Deposit and share your data
Dalhousie Dataverse @ Borealis
Borealis is a publicly accessible data repository platform, open to affiliated researchers to deposit and share research data openly with anyone in the world. It is free and built with open-source software. It is hosted on Canadian servers, provides data visualization tools for tabular data files, provides DOIs through DataCite Canada and more.
Borealis has an online guide for setting up your Borealis Dataverse account. After your account is created, e-mail data.management@dal to have your account activated.
For more information on Borealis, consult the Research Data Management LibGuide.
DalSpace is the University's institutional repository - a digital service that collects, preserves, and distributes digital material produced by the Dalhousie community. DalSpace is a great place to deposit publications and supplementary data. To learn about content guidelines, policies, and how to deposit, view the Help documents.
Contact
If you have questions about data management planning and related services, contact the data management team: data.management@dal.ca.
To assist us in the evaluation of your data management needs, please answer the pre-meeting questions provided below for your data send it to your subject liaison or data.management@dal.ca.
If you need assistance finding data or statistics, please consult the data page.
Data from completed projects can be housed in DalSpace, the Libraries' Institutional Repository, or published in a Data Repository such as Borealis.
What we need to know about you and your data:
- What kind of research do you do? (General research questions, approaches, methodologies, etc.)
- Are you the principal investigator?
- What kind of data do you collect/create? (e.g. qualitative, quantitative, models, code, etc.)
- What formats are involved? (e.g. transcripts, numeric data)
- How much data do you have? (in MB/GB/TB)
- Do you have any existing documentation files (readme.txt, lab notebooks) that provide a description of the data, file naming conventions, and methodology of how the data was collected?
- Do you have an existing metadata files with a key or reference to each data field?
- Is the data archiving and/or sharing mandated by a grant or journal submission?
- If data archiving and/or sharing is grant-mandated, what type of grant do you have?
Are you part of a research network?
Are there existing constraints or requirements placed on your data archiving and/or sharing? (Grants, journal data policies, research networks, etc.)? - May the data be shared? If so, with whom (fellow researchers, policy makers, public, etc.)? Are there specific restrictions on the data (legal, ethical, intellectual property)?
- Where is the data currently stored? (e.g. hard drive, departmental server)
- Did you collect the primary data, or was the data obtained from another source? (e.g. a government department) Or are there ownership restrictions based on funding requirements or publication requirements?
These questions are primarily for researchers in the planning stages or for projects currently in-progress. Tools for sharing and preserving data at these stages are currently under development.
- What kind of research do you do? (General research questions, approaches, methodologies etc.)
This question will help inform which librarians may need to be consulted to gain a background understanding of the subject and may even be beneficial to have the consulted librarian(s) present during the data interview. - Are you the principal investigator?
If you are not the PI, the PI may need to be involved in getting permission for sharing the data, and/or ensure they are aware of the plan. - What kind of data do you plan to collect/create? (e.g. qualitative, quantitative, models, code, etc.)
- What formats are involved? (e.g. transcripts, numeric data)
If the formats are proprietary, is that format is necessary or can it be turned into non-proprietary formats to ensure sharing and longevity. - How much data will you collect and how fast will it grow? (in MB/GB/TB)
Service fees may apply for storing data sets greater than 0.5TB. - Do you have any grants that require archiving or/and sharing your data?
If data archiving and/or sharing is grant-mandated, what type of grant do you have?
Are you part of a research network? - Are there existing constraints or requirements placed on your data archiving and/or sharing? (Grants, journal data policies, research networks, etc.)?
- May the data be shared? If so, with whom (fellow researchers, policy makers, public, etc.)? Are there specific restrictions on the data (legal, ethical, intellectual property)?
- Will you collect the primary data yourself, or will it be obtained from another source? (e.g. a government department)
When there are multiple owners for a data set, the data is more difficult to share and another institution may already be handling the preservation and sharing of the data. - How have you organized, stored, and shared your data in the past?
Completed Project Data
Data from completed projects can be housed in DalSpace, the Libraries' Institutional Repository, or published in a Data Repository such as Borealis.
What we need to know about you and your data:
- What kind of research do you do? (General research questions, approaches, methodologies, etc.)
- Are you the principal investigator?
- What kind of data do you collect/create? (e.g. qualitative, quantitative, models, code, etc.)
- What formats are involved? (e.g. transcripts, numeric data)
- How much data do you have? (in MB/GB/TB)
- Do you have any existing documentation files (readme.txt, lab notebooks) that provide a description of the data, file naming conventions, and methodology of how the data was collected?
- Do you have an existing metadata files with a key or reference to each data field?
- Is the data archiving and/or sharing mandated by a grant or journal submission?
- If data archiving and/or sharing is grant-mandated, what type of grant do you have?
Are you part of a research network?
Are there existing constraints or requirements placed on your data archiving and/or sharing? (Grants, journal data policies, research networks, etc.)? - May the data be shared? If so, with whom (fellow researchers, policy makers, public, etc.)? Are there specific restrictions on the data (legal, ethical, intellectual property)?
- Where is the data currently stored? (e.g. hard drive, departmental server)
- Did you collect the primary data, or was the data obtained from another source? (e.g. a government department) Or are there ownership restrictions based on funding requirements or publication requirements?
Current Project Data
These questions are primarily for researchers in the planning stages or for projects currently in-progress. Tools for sharing and preserving data at these stages are currently under development.
- What kind of research do you do? (General research questions, approaches, methodologies etc.)
This question will help inform which librarians may need to be consulted to gain a background understanding of the subject and may even be beneficial to have the consulted librarian(s) present during the data interview. - Are you the principal investigator?
If you are not the PI, the PI may need to be involved in getting permission for sharing the data, and/or ensure they are aware of the plan. - What kind of data do you plan to collect/create? (e.g. qualitative, quantitative, models, code, etc.)
- What formats are involved? (e.g. transcripts, numeric data)
If the formats are proprietary, is that format is necessary or can it be turned into non-proprietary formats to ensure sharing and longevity. - How much data will you collect and how fast will it grow? (in MB/GB/TB)
Service fees may apply for storing data sets greater than 0.5TB. - Do you have any grants that require archiving or/and sharing your data?
If data archiving and/or sharing is grant-mandated, what type of grant do you have?
Are you part of a research network? - Are there existing constraints or requirements placed on your data archiving and/or sharing? (Grants, journal data policies, research networks, etc.)?
- May the data be shared? If so, with whom (fellow researchers, policy makers, public, etc.)? Are there specific restrictions on the data (legal, ethical, intellectual property)?
- Will you collect the primary data yourself, or will it be obtained from another source? (e.g. a government department)
When there are multiple owners for a data set, the data is more difficult to share and another institution may already be handling the preservation and sharing of the data. - How have you organized, stored, and shared your data in the past?