data management

Data Management Plans (DMPs) 

If your research involves data collection, you should have a plan for how you will describe, store, and share your data.  

The resources below can help you understand when, why, and how to create a plan for managing and sharing your data. 

Reviewing the FAIR principles of research data will also help you in developing a good data management plan.  

• DMP Tool 

DMPTool is a free tool from the University of California to help researchers create, review, and share data management plans that meet requirements from institutions and funding agencies such as NIH, NSF, DOD, DOJ, and so forth. Provides templates and guidance throughout your DMP creation. NOTE: Click "Log in" and choose SHSU from the list of institutions to login with your SHSU account. 

• Quick-Start Guide for Using DMPTool 

• Data Management General Guidance (from DMPTool) 
• How to create a good data management plan 

by Rob Hooft, for Elsevier Authors' Update, 28 September 2016 

• What to Keep? A Jisc Research Data Study 

(Feb 2019) 

• Data Management Plan Self-Assessment Tool 

Tool to assist researchers in self-assessing a DMP. By Jake Carlson, Purdue University Research Repository. 

Data Repositories

• ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research)

ICPSR supports FREE deposits of digital data, worldwide dissemination, long-term preservation, and other benefits.

• Harvard Dataverse

"The Harvard Dataverse is open to all researchers worldwide in all disciplines." Click Sign Up to create an account, then choose Add Data.

• Open Science Framework (OSF)

Open Science Framework serves as a scholarly commons for documentation, files, collaboration, and connecting to services for research outputs.

• Mendeley Data

Data storage and sharing service, free for individual researchers.

• GitHub

Although GitHub is best known as a place to host programming code, it can also be used to openly host data.

• figshare

Researchers get 20 GB of free private space and unlimited free public space. Upload any file format, up to 5 GB per file. Get DOIs for your work.

• Dryad

The Dryad Digital Repository is a curated resource that makes research data discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. Dryad provides a general-purpose home for a wide diversity of data types. Data published are assigned unique DOIs. Data publication costs $120 (more for exceptionally large files), but some journals sponsor this fee.

• Open Data on Amazon Web Services

Specialized Data Repositories

• re3data: Registry of Research Data Repositories
• Stanford's List of Domain-Specific Data Repositories
• Recommended Data Repositories List from the Journal Scientific Data

Includes some generalist and some subject-specific repositories. (Scientific Data, Springer Nature)

• Directory of Open Data Repositories

(Note: may contain some outdated links/resources.) Arranged by discipline, spanning life, physical, and social sciences, and including some multidisciplinary repositories. Part of the Open Access Directory.

Visit Newton Gresham Library for more information on data management.