Manage data

Data management describes the handling, organisation, and structuring of research material during the research process. On these pages we have collected useful information about how to maintain, preserve and share research data.

Plan

There is good reason to start planning for how you will collect and manage data in the research project as early as possible. Here you can find information about storage, security, costs, and other factors that you want to consider at the start of a project.

Organise

Data should be organised in a way that makes it easy to find the right version of the right file at the right time. Here you can read about what to consider when you create a folder structure, give names to and manage versions of your files, and choose file formats.

Document

To document research data is to describe the research activities, data structures, and decisions you make during the research process, which may be useful for later analysis and reuse of the data.

Work with data

Good data management helps project members to find the right version of the project data when they need it, without unnecessary work and or risk of data loss or errors.

Prepare and share

What happens to the research data when they have been collected, processed and analysed? Here we describe what you need to do to make the data from your project reusable for new research. You can also learn more about licenses, PID, the FAIR data principles, and what open access to data really means.