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Key Concepts in Research Data Management

What is Research Data Management?

Research data management is an umbrella term covering how you organise, structure, store, and care for the digital information generated or used during a research project.

It includes:

  • Planning in advance how your data will be managed
  • Documenting working practices
  • Considering how information will be handled on a day-to-day basis
  • Making decisions on what happens to data in the long term, after the project concludes
  • Preparing for data to be preserved
  • Considering whether information may be reproducible

Benefits of Data Management

Good practice in managing your data brings various benefits for you, your fellow researchers, and the wider public. It can help make the research process more efficient, minimising the time spent searching for information that is being accumulated and thus helping maximise the time available for the meat of the research work. A little planning at the beginning of a project can make things much easier later on, saving work and reducing stress. It is also a key requirement by most research funders and related stakeholders. Good data management can also help make more of the fruits of a research project available to a wider audience, increasing impact and allowing researchers to get full credit for the work done.

Key benefits include:

  • Research data can be shown to be accurate, authentic, reliable and complete – allowing researchers to find what they need, when they need it
  • Data security is enhanced, thus minimising the risk of data loss or unintended disclosure
  • Research results can often be replicated without difficulty
  • Good documentation and metadata allow research data to remain comprehensible over time
  • When researchers leave a research group, procedures around handover of data are clear
  • Sharing, reuse and reproducibility of data is made possible
  • Collaboration is facilitated
  • Duplication of effort is kept to a minimum
  • Researchers have a greater opportunity to boost their visibility and reputation among peers
  • Funding and regulatory body requirements are met

What counts as research data?

‘Data’ is a very broad term, covering a wide range of type of information used in research. The nature of research data can vary widely depending on discipline, type of project, and the stage of the research process. 

The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) offers this definition:

Representations of observations, objects, or other entities used as evidence of phenomena for the purposes of research or scholarship.

Research data is defined as that which is collected, observed, or created for purposes of analysing to produce original research results. Such research data are the recorded information necessary to support or validate a research project’s observations, findings or outputs. In practice, the nature of research data can vary widely depending on discipline. It can be textual, numerical, qualitative, quantitative, final, preliminary, physical, digital or print.

Research data comes in very many formats, including: word processed documents, PDFs, spreadsheets, lab books, online surveys, digital recordings, databases or computer software. It may include, but is not limited to: 

  • Instrument measurements
  • Experimental observations 
  • Still images, video and audio 
  • Text documents, spreadsheets, databases 
  • Manuscripts, text corpus/corpora historical records and archive materials 
  • Quantitative data (e.g. household survey data) 
  • Survey results & interview transcripts 
  • Simulation data, models & software 
  • Slides, artefacts, specimens, samples 
  • Computer log files, emails, web pages and forum posts


This guidance primarily focuses on managing digital research data. 

Key Principles

The University has adopted the following set of principles, derived from the Concordat on Open Research Data, which should be followed by those conducting research in order to ensure that research data are managed in accordance with relevant legislative, regulatory, contractual, ethical, and other obligations.

  • Open access to research data is an enabler of high quality research, a facilitator of innovation and safeguards good research practice.
  • There are sound reasons why the openness of research data may need to be restricted but any restrictions must be justified and justifiable.
  • Open access to research data carries a significant cost, which should be respected by all parties.
  • The right of the creators of research data to reasonable first use is recognised.
  • Use of others’ data should always conform to legal, ethical and regulatory frameworks including appropriate acknowledgement.
  • Good data management is fundamental to all stages of the research process and should be established at the outset.
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