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Data Module #2: Planning for Your Data Use

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Data Modules
Table of Contents

#1 - What is Research Data?
#2 - Planning for Your Data Use
#3 - Finding & Collecting Data
#4 - Keeping Your Data Organized
#5 - Intellectual Property & Ethics
#6 - Storage, Backup, & Security
#7 - Documentation

 

Questions? Contact Us!

  Aaron Albertson
Research & Instruction Librarian, Social Sciences
(651) 696-6530
albertson@macalester.edu
  Beth Hillemann
Research & Instruction Librarian, Social Sciences
(651) 696-6704
hillemann@macalester.edu

Module created by Aaron Albertson, Beth Hillemann, & Ron Joslin.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Benefits of Data Planning

Data management is keeping track of your data and making sure it is safe and usable. It is important to follow data management best practices throughout the life of your data, from the point of collection through the completion of your project (and beyond).

Benefits to Data Management:

  • Organization: Managing your data effectively saves you time and reduces the risk of data loss.
     
  • Credibility: A well-documented process helps others understand exactly what you did with your data and aids in the validation of your research results.
     
  • Future scholarship: Other researchers will be able to discover and understand your data and research process, enabling further research using your data.
     
  • Standard practice: It is becoming the norm to have a data plan for scholarly research and is required by several major research funding organizations and journals.

'Data Sharing and Management Snafu in 3 Short Acts'
by Karen Hanson, Alisa Surkis and Karen Yacobucci (NYU Health Science Library) CC BY 3.0 license

This brief video highlights the problems that can happen when
data management best practices are not followed.