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Business: 47-894: Research Methods in Behavioral Sciences: Research Data Management

What is Research Data Management?

Research data management (RDM) is the process of creating organized, documented, accessible, and reusable research data. It helps with research organization and comprehensibility, making onboarding to projects easier and allowing for ease in communicating research results to colleagues and the public. RDM helps improve research workflows to make them more resilient, efficient, maintainable, and reproducible.

RDM is research self care! The actions taken today to organize your research data will help future you feel more in control of your research project, and make it easier to share your results with others. While it is good to implement RDM techniques as early as you can in your research, we understand that there may be many barriers to doing so, including a lack of extra time to devote to it. We're here to help!

Free Self-Paced, Online Courses for Data Management

Helpful Resources at CMU Libraries

Why Manage Data?

Taking the extra time now to manage your data will save you an immense amount of time later on in your research. 

  • Meet grant requirements of funding bodies, who often require data management plans
  • Ensure research integrity and replication 
  • Ensure your research data and records are accurate, complete, authentic, and reliable
  • Increase your own research efficiency - the less time you have to spend cleaning up data messes and deciphering your data, the more time you have to boost your own research agenda!
  • Save time and resources in the long run
  • Enhance data security and minimize the risk of data loss
  • Prevent duplication of effort by enabling others to use your data
  • Comply with practices conducted in industry and commerce

Data Management Happens at all Stages of your Project!

 

Research Data Lifecycle, from designing a project to archiving and reusing dataData management should happen at all stages of your research project! From the beginning stages of designing and planning your research, to collecting and analyzing your data, to publishing and archiving your data, and even when reusing your data! The sooner you start to think about data management in your project, the better - but, we understand why it might not be the most exciting thing to spend time on. We at CMU Libraries are here to help you develop good data management practices so you can spend more time on the fun parts of your research, such as collecting data and creating visualizations!

This LibGuide offers advice and guidance on data management techniques for each stage of a research project. Keep navigating across the tabs on the left side of the page to learn more!

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