Planning for research data

• Costing of research data

  The UKRI research data policy states that all research data management (RDM) and sharing activities need to be costed into your research in terms of time and resources needed. Early planning can significantly reduce costs. In most cases, direct costs for RDM throughout and beyond your project are eligible costs in your grant application and should be justified in the data management plan that you prepare for your application. This involves:

  • identifying all data management activities and steps required to preserve data and make them open for sharing, e.g. based on a data management checklist;
  • costing each activity in terms of people's time or the physical resources needed such as storage, hardware or software.

  Research data management costs can incur during and after a project. Below are some of the aspects that should be considered when costing for research data management.

  • Data storage and backup. Currently, each principal investigator can request 0.5TB of free central, networked storage and additional storage can be purchased from IT Services for a one-off cost of £400/TB which includes a backup copy or at the reduced cost of £200/TB without the backup copy.
  • Data transfer and access. For example, special measures might be required for the transfer of data collected during fieldwork and for providing access to the data to external collaborators.
  • Data access fees. Do you need to cover fees for accessing existing data as part of your project?
  • Data generation. Will you be using paid-for University-internal or external services for generating your research data?
  • Data description and documentation. All data types require description and documentation but some might require more resources in terms of staff or software.
  • Data cleaning. Examples of data cleaning include checking the validity of codes used, checking for anomalous values, spell-checking, matching data to documentation.
  • Data transcription. Depending on the volume of qualitative data to transcribe, additional resources such as staff or specific tools might be required.
  • Data security. Depending on the nature of the data, additional security measures might be required and these might incur extra costs.
  • Data consent and anonymisation. If participants need to be re-contacted after the work has concluded, additional costs might incur. Also, depending on the volume of data, anonymisation might require additional staff or tools.
  • Sharing, archival and preservation costs. If data is required to be deposited in data centres or national and subject data repositories, charges might apply. See also publish, archive and preserve.

  You might also want to consider whether the project requires a dedicated data manager. In some cases, it might be possible to fund such a position by pooling funding from different projects.

  The UK Data Service has developed a simple activity-based costing template that can be used as a checklist for costing RDM for your project. 

• Data management plan (DMP)

  A data management plan describes the data (or similar evidence) that a project will collect, how they will be documented, how they will be stored during the project, how they will be archived at the end of the project and how access will be granted to them where appropriate. Your DMP will also help you consider issues related to confidentiality, ethics, security and copyright before initiating your research.‌

  Other common names for a data management plan include:

  • data management and sharing plan
  • access and data management plan
  • statement on data sharing
  • data access plan
  • technical plan

  Most funders now require a DMP to be submitted with a grant application. See specific funders' research data policies for more information.

  The benefits of a DMP

  The benefits of a data management plan go beyond funder compliance. Writing a DMP will help you consider aspects of your research such as file formats, storage requirements, ethics, copyright, intellectual property and archival plans early on in your project saving time and costs at a later stage. 

  Although your DMP is prepared before your project begins, you should aim to review it at regular intervals during the project so that it remains relevant to your research. 

  Some of the benefits of writing and keeping a data management plan up to date are:

  • data are well described and documented, therefore easily understandable;
  • it can offer continuity when existing project members leave or new ones join;
  • it offers an inventory of project data so that unnecessary duplications are avoided;
  • it helps consider issues related to confidentiality, ethics, security and copyright early on in the project;
  • it helps plan for storage provisions;
  • it helps evaluate data sharing options.

  Support for writing a DMP

  The research data management team can help find the right template for your data management plan.

  Alternatively, DMPonline is an online tool developed by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) to assist researchers in writing their data management plans. It offers a number of templates meeting the requirements of the most common funders and it provides guidance on how to complete them. 

  Examples of data management plans are available from the research data management team and online. The Digital Curation Centre provide a number of examples for data management plan for different funders and some can also be found on funders' web pages.