Data Management for Research: Managing your data

→ To fulfill grant funding agency requirements

→ To provide greater visibility for your research

→ To enable easier collaboration and sharing

→ To streamline data collection & findability within your lab or research group 

We provide:

→ Assistance with developing data management plans for grant proposals

→ Advice and support in data management, standards, documentation and organization to support reuse and preservation

→ Access to Northeastern's Digital Repository Service for data storage, sharing, and reuse.

These checklists, tailored to stages of the research lifecycle, can help you streamline and organize work on your project.

General guidance for data management

This site offers helpful tips on a host of data management topics, ranging from non-proprietary file formats to naming conventions to persistent identifiers to data documentation.

Whether you're depositing data for publishing or grant requirements, or just want to make the output of your research available to your colleagues, depositing data in a repository or digital archive will ensure your research will be discoverable and usable for a long time.

→ Northeastern's Digital Repository Service is currently home to over 150 datasets. 

→ Interested in adding your data?  Learn more about the DRS and find out how to prepare your data for deposit into the DRS.

Searching for advice on how to best organize your project or your research group's work? 

→  Check out The Practice of Reproducible Research 

This free Gitbook features over 30 case studies that help bridge the gap between theory and real-world application.  The case studies describe in detail how researchers in various disciplines have combined tools and workflows to make their lives easier, and maximize the reproducibility of their work.

Missed our Summer 2020 Training Series? Watch the recorded webinar below that distills some of my favorite file organization and management tips in less than 20 minutes. Just click on the image below and log in to open up the webinar in a new tab. For questions, comments, and any accessibility or captioning requests, please email me. 

Note: The webinar is available to Northeastern affiliates only. If you wish to view the webinars and are not a Northeastern affiliate, please get in touch. 

How can I organize and manage my digital stuff (in 20 minutes)?

Getting your digital house in order is like writing a love letter to your future self. We’ll share a few quick file organization, naming, and documentation tips that can help you – and your collaborators – remember what you did and find your stuff 6 months from now.

README files describe your data, and help facilitate accurate understanding and reuse of your work.

Getting started

• Create your README as a plain text file to avoid potential issues with proprietary file formats.  PDF can be used if formatting is important.
• Choose whether to create a separate README file for each data file, or a README for the entire data package.
  • Example - separate README for each data file
  • Example - README for entire data package

Recommended README file content, in brief

• Names and contact information for personnel involved with the project
• Short description of the data contained in each file
• File list, including a description of the relationships between the files
• For tabular data, full names and definitions of column headings
• Units of measurement
• Any specialized abbreviations, codes, or symbols used
• Copyright/licensing information
• Limitations of the data
• Funding sources

For more detail, please see this README file template.

Additional resources

• Example README file
• README guidance from Cornell, with examples
• README guidance from Dryad

Pivot integrates funding, collaborator discovery, and publishing opportunities into one powerful tool. 

This video demonstrates basic searching for funding opportunities in Pivot.  Check out the Pivot YouTube channel for training on other topics