Why Manage Research Data?
Effective data management will:
- Save time: Planning for your data management needs ahead of time will save you time and resources in the long run.
- Increase your research efficiency: Have you ever had a hard time understanding the data that you or your colleagues have collected? Documenting your data throughout its life cycle saves time because it ensures that in the future you and others will be able to understand and use your data.
- Facilitate new discoveries: Enabling other researchers to use your data reinforces open scientific inquiry and can lead to new and unanticipated discoveries. And doing so prevents duplication of effort by enabling others to use your data rather than trying to gather the data themselves.
- Meet grant requirements: Many funding agencies now require that researchers deposit in an archive data which they collect as part of a research project.
- Support Open Access: Researchers are becoming increasingly more aware of the need to manage their work and consider issues of scholarly communication. The Open Data movement advocates for researchers to share their data in order to foster the development of knowledge.
- Increase Research Impact: by maximizing the visibility of the data and promoting transparency in search
- Ensure compliance: to meet the requirements of the institution or funding agency
- Improve accessibility: ensuring that the quality and integrity of the data is maintained during and beyond the life cycle of the project
- Safeguard research data: by establishing appropriate storage, back-up and management
Source: MIT's Guide to Data Management and Publishing and Curtin Library, Research Data Management.
