This document summarizes a presentation on the benefits of research data management. It discusses how data management can benefit researchers through increased citations and compliance with funder requirements. It also benefits society by enabling data sharing, reuse and discovery. However, many researchers do not practice good data management due to a lack of skills, resources or incentives. The presentation provides information on data management best practices and their importance for research excellence.

1. Research data management:
Benefits for the researcher,
Benefits for Society
Kevin Ashley
Digital Curation Centre
www.dcc.ac.uk
@kevingashley
Kevin.ashley@ed.ac.uk
Reusable with attribution: CC-BY The DCC is supported by Jisc

2. A summary
• Some benefits:
– Citation & impact
– Compliance with funders & regulation
– Improving your research
• What stops us ?
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3. An alternative summary
Being Selfish
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What’s
possible now
… and still
benefiting others
Being Just Good
Enough
Thanks to:
Neil Chue Hong (@npch), Software Sustainability
Institute
ORCID: 0000-0002-8876-7606
David Flanders (@dfflanders), Dr Steven Manos
(DrStevenManos)
University of Melbourne.
All my colleagues at the DCC
Cameron Neylon (@CameronNeylon)

4. “the active management and appraisal of
data over the lifecycle of scholarly
and scientific interest”
Data management is part of
good research practice
What is Research Data Management?
Plan
Create
Document
Use
Publish
Share
Slide by Sarah Jones, DCC

5. Should all data be open?
• NO
• Many reasons – most to do with human
subjects
• But data existence should always be open
• Allows discovery & negotiation on use
• Avoids pointless replication
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6. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sethw/113073189/
95% of research
results are
never published
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7. But if you could publish just data…
• You could gain benefit even from the
experiments that fail – as long you got good
data
• ‘Data papers’ are one way to achieve this
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Findable, citable data has value
• Important to link publications to data (and vice versa)
• Increases citations – of data & publication
• Increases reuse (hence value)
• But effects exist even without publication, if data is:
– Archived
– Citable
– Discoverable
• All benefit – researcher; institution; publisher

9. Citability
• Making data available increases citations
• Everyone – academic, funder, institution –
loves citations
• Want evidence?
– Alter, Pienta, Lyle – 240%, social sciences *
– Piwowar, Vision – 9% (microarray data)†
– Henneken, Accomazzi – 20% (astronomy) #
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† Piwowar H, Vision TJ. (2013) Data reuse & the open data citation advantage. PeerJ PrePrints 1:e1v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1v1
* Amy Pienta, George Alter, Jared Lyle, (2010) The Enduring Value of Social Science Research: The Use and Reuse of Primary Research Data.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/78307
# Edwin Henneken, Alberto Accomazzi, (2011) Linking to Data - Effect on Citation Rates in Astronomy. http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3618

10. Funders are making demands
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11. Funder requirements
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12. Regulatory requirements
• Data protection, freedom of information,
research ethics – all apply to data
• If your data is badly managed:
– Compliance is hard
• Know what you deleted (and why) as well as
what you have
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13. Because it’s good practice
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“Data management is
essential to
excellence in
research”
Professor Charlotte Clarke, Associate
Dean for Research, School of Health,
Community and Education Studies
Apart from the benefits for
research, good data
management is vital for
many reasons:
accountability, security,
appropriate data-sharing,
re-use protocols and
preservation for example
Prof Julie McLeod, School
of Computing, Engineering
& Information Sciences
www.northumbria.ac.uk/browse/ne/uninews/datamanagement?view=Standard&news=archive

14. Finally…
• Well-managed data makes your research
easier, now and in future
• Well-managed data is easier to share, more
likely to be re-used
• ISharing data is good for you
• It’s good for all of us
• It isn’t as hard as you think – we’re here to
show you how!
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16. Roles and
Responsibilities
What data to keep
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How to cite data
What data to keep

18. Acquire research data skills
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19. Data reuse - messages
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Often your data tells
stories that your
publications do not
Not all data comes from
other researchers
One person’s noise is
another person’s signal
Discipline-bounded data
discovery doesn’t give us
all we need or want