Data Management at UT

Welcome

Digital Dreams At the University of Texas at Austin, faculty, researchers, and students across all disciplines are engaged in research projects that use, gather, and/or create data. Throughout the research life cycle, as data grows in size and complexity, so does the infrastructure needed to support and study it. Currently, major funding agencies are requiring researchers to include data management plans in their grant proposals including best-practices for creating and developing data, as well as plans for its long-term accessibility/archiving when applicable.

Best practices in data management are evolving at a fast pace to streamline and improve the research process and to assure that the data can be shared in the future. Data sharing increases research accountability, its visibility, and contributes to more discoveries and data reuse. To help in the development and stewardship of research data, a multidisciplinary team including UT Libraries, TACC and ITS are offering resources and consulting to UT researchers in all disciplines that are using and/or creating data.

Managing Your Data

Medical Data

What does data management involve?

There are many aspects to managing your data and it can be a bit overwhelming to think of them as a whole. This section explains the different issues related to data management and provides links to resources and additional information.

Data Management Resources at UT

Learn more about the resources at UT Austin for active data management, dissemination, and long term archiving:

UT Libraries offers the UT Digital Repository for archiving datasets under 1GB, and papers and publications associated with data.

Information Technology Services offers data management services and hardware to support grant writing and research activities.

Texas Advanced Computing Center offers computational and storage resources suitable for terabyte and petabyte scale collections.

The Office of Sponsored Projects serves as the coordinating office for externally funded research and sponsored projects and can answer questions about the process of submitting grant proposals.

Other resources at UT

Data Management Plans and Templates

Leaf detail What is a data management plan (DMP)?

A data management plan will help you to properly manage your data for your own use, meet funder requirements, and enable data sharing in the future. A DMP describes the structure and nature of the data as well as the activities and technical requirements to gather, merge, transfer, organize, document, analyze and preserve research data.

News

Databib now available

Databib is a registry of repositories for research data. It is a collaboration between Purdue and Penn State, and the registry describes and links to hundreds of data repositories. Some repositories accept data submissions in particular disciplines, so if you’re looking for an appropriate place for your data, Databib may help you find repositories in your field. More info on Databib at their website: http://databib.org

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Training: Writing a Data Management Plan: A Guide for the Perplexed

Thursday, March 29, 2012
1:00pm to 3:00pm (CT)
JJ Pickle Research Campus
ROC 1.468/1.474
10100 Burnet Rd.
Austin, TX 78758

This class will be webcast.

New requirements from funding agencies, along with the increasing importance of digital data in the conduct of research, have lead to a new and unfamiliar component of proposal writing (and reviewing): the data management plan. This session, following on the Data Management Planning and Execution session offered earlier this year, focuses on the process of writing Data Management Plans, going beyond templates and formulas to present strategies for developing a plan for presentation to collaborators, reviewers, and institutions. We discuss the writing of a data management plan as a way to ease the achievement of research goals, and treat data as a critical component of optimal research outcomes. Topics covered will include the importance of disciplinary norms and community collections, data sharing, planning for provenance and other metadata, the relationship between data management and analysis and long-term preservation of your data.

Registration

Please submit any questions that you may have via the TACC Consulting System: http://portal.tacc.utexas.edu/consulting

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