Research data management
Research data must be handled as openly as possible – as closed as necessary.
What is research data?
Research data is the material that has been collected or generated by researchers through a project to serve as a basis for scientific analysis and validation of research results. Research data can be anything from measurement results and observations to computer code, images and audio files.
What are the requirements?
Data is an important part of research, and today the proportion of research funders and authorities working to make research data available and to preserve it in the long term is increasing. The lifespan of the data is often longer than the research project under which it was collected. Data can be re-analysed or reworked in follow-up projects and can be reused by other researchers. To fulfill this, the handling of data must take place in a correct way. A guide in this is the FAIR principles.
Who owns the research data?
The researcher does not own his or her research data. If the research has been conducted, for example, at a university or college, it is the higher education institution that owns the data, which thus becomes a public document. Since University West is a public authority, the principle of public access to official documents is applied, which means that public documents can be requested from the public as long as they are not covered by a confidentiality provision or other relevant legislation.
Make a plan for your research data
Data management must be sustainable and efficient, which means that the organisation, documentation, storage, processing, archiving and preservation as well as sharing of data are part of a research activity. Read more about how you should manage your research data at Researchdata.se (from the Swedish National Data Service, SND).
The elements of a data management plan
A data management plan (DHP) is a document used to describe how research data is managed before, during and after a research project or research study. This is a living document that is continuously updated throughout the research process. The plan includes:
- An overview of the project
- Handling of data worthy of protection
- Planning for data collection and production
- How the data material should be documented and according to what procedures
- How to organise the data
- Cost
- How to preserve and make the data available
DHP highlights different aspects of data management such as collection, documentation, processing, storage and archiving to enable the reuse of research data in future research. What this documentation looks like depends on the discipline, type of data and requirements from the university, external funders or journals.
Search for existing data for your projects
Open access research results and research data can be found and reused in new research. Research data made available through repositories will be searchable, citable, provide increased opportunities for impact, merit and open up for future collaborations.
Share your research data
How you as a researcher should share your research data depends a lot on the type of data involved, for example, video recordings with children require a different procedure than data on soil samples.
There are several different ways to publish and make data available. Research data can be published together with a publication or as a separate dataset. Sometimes the data is made available on a publisher's website, but even more common is that it is deposited in a so-called data repository.
Researchers can receive support from both higher education and national level
At University West, the Data Access Unit (DAU) function works to provide support to the university's researchers and doctoral students and to enable research data produced to be made searchable, accessible and reusable. The function brings together a number of different competencies that are important for researchers to consult with regarding current research data; librarian, contract lawyer, archivist, systems technician and representative from the Grants and Innovation Office.
For example, DAU offers training and support in issues regarding data management and documentation, as well as receiving datasets with associated descriptions that need to be reviewed to ensure that they are of sufficient quality to be made available and reused. Contact DAU via forskningsdata@hv.se.
Swedish National Data Service, SND
SND is a consortium consisting of 9 higher education institutions in Sweden. In addition to this, there is also a network consisting of 40 higher education institutions and other organisations, which includes University West. The consortium works to educate and inform higher education institutions and organisations about research data at the national level. On their website, there is in-depth material on the various aspects of the research data.
At the nine higher education institutions that run SND, there are so-called domain specialists. They are experts in various research areas who support you as a researcher regarding research data. The domain specialists act as a bridge between the research community, research groups, repositories, and the local DAU units.