Data Management

It is the responsibility of the researcher to properly manage data. This page is designed as a resource for information, resources, templates, and procedures pertaining to data management specific to RITMO.

The Basics

The process of data management involves plans and procedures for the lifecycle of the data. It is a requirement that each project complete appropriate research data management documentation. 

Data Lifecycle from RDM Elixer Kit
RDM Elixer https://rdmkit.elixir-europe.org/ 

The data lifecycle involves the seven steps pictured which can be broken into four parts: 

  • Administration
  • Awareness
  • Data Itself
  • Effort and Costs

By going through the task of writing a data management plan, the researcher will outline the needs and procedures of each project with regards to research data management.

UiO Policy

  • “UiO is responsible for facilitating the information flow, competence measures and research support systems…”
  • “Scientists and students are responsible for managing research data according to the principles and requirements…”

Full policy

Why manage data?

Data management is good research practice as it:

  • increases the value of research
  • improves research visibility
  • reduces the risk of data loss and corruption
  • avoids data duplication
  • enables research verifiability
  • allows sharing and re-using of data with future researchers

UiO is responsible for all data used in research. However, it is ultimately the individual researcher that will need to abide by the rules and regulations. All projects funded by the Research Council of Norway are required to have data management plans.

How to benefit from research data management?

  • Love letter to your future selves and your coworkers
  • Skills for CV
  • Easier to publish more things
  • Save tons of time
  • Essential component for FAIR and open science

How data management makes you a good teammate?

  • More organized projects with planning ahead
  • Easier to work with others 
  • Saves emails, phone calls, deep dives into archives
  • Increase in publications
  • Contributes to open research activities

What is Open Data?

 

UiO’s policy follows the "open as standard" principle. However, there may be reasons for deciding not to make the data openly available. Privacy and copyright issues are typical reasons for not being able to make data openly available. This means that data should be as "open as possible, as closed as necessary".

There is no one definition of what "open" means. Also, keep in mind that "open" is not the same as "free". The two concepts overlap, but you may have free data that is not open and open data that is not free. The general recommendation is that data should be both open and freely available for reuse and redistribution. Then it is necessary to equip the data with a permissive license, such as the Creative Commons licenses (CC).

What does FAIR mean?

UiO wants to manage research data according to the FAIR principles, which state that data should be:

  • Findable: Data should have rich metadata and persistent identifier.
  • Accessible: Understanding authorization/authentication.
  • Interoperable: Metadata should be shared, accessible in broadly applicable language for knowledge representation.
  • Reusable: The data should be well defined to be replicated /combined in different settings.

The general idea is that Open Data needs to be FAIR. After all, if you cannot find and access the data, they are not open. However, FAIR data does not necessarily need to be open. For example, a lot of data in the NSD database is not publicly available. However, the data follows the FAIR principles, so they are findable, and they can be accessed if one applies to use them. So the data's FAIRness secures that the data may be reusable even if they are not published openly.

Getting Started with Data Management

Starting the process of data management can be daunting. It is recommended to begin early in project development. The most important thing to do is to create a data management plan (DMP). 

This living document will walk you through everything needed for planning your project. Some of the topics to think about as part of this are:

How to handle the legal/ethical components of your project

The individual researcher has an independent responsibility to ensure that their research proceeds in accordance with good research practice and recognized scientific and ethical principles, and in compliance with the regulatory framework. Human subjects research specifically needs to handle privacy (GDPR) appropriately. At RITMO we not only have to worry about copyright with regards to open research activities but in relation to music. 

Where you want to store your data

Privacy and information safety is important at RITMO. To make it easier to comply with the law, UiO divides information into four color classes based on protection needs of the data. These colors are used to dictate how you interact with the data.

Image may contain: Rectangle, Font, Material property, Logo, Parallel.

Color Classification Guide

Data storage Guide

 


It is the responsibility of the researcher to classify their data. Most of the data at RITMO is considered yellow. Most projects use the RITMO Felles drive for storage. More info can be found in the e-infrastructure section of the handbook 

Note: You will need to be given access to the RITMO Felles drive, talk to Kayla if you need this. 

How you want to organize your files

Each project has unique data and therefore unique organizational needs. It is important to not only decide where you want to keep your data but how it will be named and organized. 

What to do at the end of your project

It is important to plan early to ensure data is prepared for FAIRification and any open research activities you may want. Data archiving and publishing is a key component in that. Be sure to make a plan with your supervisor about what happens when you leave RITMO. 

Additional Information

Helpful Links from UiO:

Courses: 

It is highly recommended that you take some courses from the DSC. They regularly run some on Open and Reproducible research as well as Research Data. 

Additionally there are other courses offered that might be helpful 

Data Management Resources:

Plan Research Data is a knowledge resource to support Data Management planning at Norwegian research institutions.

RDM Kit from Elixir Europe is Kayla's favorite single website that explains research data management in the context of the data lifecycle. 

Contact Information

For additional information or questions contact data manager / lab engineer Kayla Burnim