UKRI’s Concordat on Open Research Data (2016) defines research data as “the evidence that underpins the answer to the research question, and [which] can be used to validate findings regardless of its form (e.g. print, digital, or physical)”.
This means that all the physical or digital materials created or collected during the course of research and which underpin your published research outputs are research data. Depending on your discipline, research data might be photographs of archival documents, sketchbooks, bibliographies and reading notes, the documentation of practice-based research, video and audio files, spreadsheets, software, instrumental data, or 3D models.
When planning a new research activity or developing an application for funding, it is good practice to think about how you will collect, store, and organise this research data both during and after the lifetime of the project.
Looking after your research data effectively improves the integrity, longevity, and usefulness of your research. Good research data management or curation practices also enable your research data to be shared openly for re-use by others, in keeping with relevant legal, ethical and regulatory frameworks and disciplinary norms, and thereby increasing the visibility, impact, and integrity of your research.
On this page, you’ll find quick links to our guidance on what you should consider at each stage of the research data lifecycle to manage your research data or curate your portfolio effectively.
Plan
Create and store
- Where to store data
- What to do with non-digital data and practice-based research data
- How to share data with colleagues and collaborators
- What to do with personal and commercially sensitive data
- Using survey tools
- How to describe your data (creating metadata)
- How to request a website
- How to organise your data files
- Using video and audio conferencing tools to record interviews
Preserve and share
- How to publish your research data
- How to select and prepare data for preservation and publication
- How to use a research data repository
- How to restrict access to data
- How to choose a suitable research data repository
- Options for securely sharing sensitive data
- How to create a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) in the Virtual Research Environment
- How to write a data access statement
More information
You can find all the UKRI research councils’ research data policies and UKRI’s Common principles of research data in their guidance on making your research data open.
Jisc’s Research Data Management Toolkit for Researchers provides detailed guidance on what you should consider at each stage of the research data lifecycle.
You should also refer to the UK Data Service’s guidance on preparing and managing research data.
You can find introductory training on managing your research data on our support, advice, and training pages.
You should also familiarise yourself with the University’s Research data management policy and IT Policies (requires a staff login).
Contact us
For further guidance and support, please contact the research data management officer at [email protected].