The purpose, practicalities, pitfalls and policies of managing and sharing data in the UK

The data policy landscape

The policy position on data management in the UK is driven on many levels. Many institutions now have policies – an example is the Cambridge University Research Data Management Policy Framework. Increasingly publishers such as PLOS are requiring that research published in their journals is accompanied by the data underpinning the research. Some journals, such as Nature’s Scientific Data are specifically data-only journals

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Good data management includes very basic practices such as:

– Writing a research data management plan at the beginning of the research process – identifying all of these issues
– Using a file naming protocol (including version control)
– Backing up work in several places
– Identifying any data that might be politically, personally or commercially sensitive
– Determining who owns what data
– Ensuring data that is being used for research across collaborations is shared in safe, secure and legal shared facilities, bearing in mind Export Control Legislation.
– Having good metadata protocols
– Using a reputable and reliable storage/sharing facility that offers persistent identifiers (DOIs)

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