Before You Begin
There are lots of decisions to make before you start to create your data. Making these choices early on in your project can save you time and effort later, and many funders now expect you to show you’ve engaged in data planning. The decisions will affect how you can access, use and look after your data.
You may also be interested in
- Guidance on Copyright and Licensing for research data
- Intellectual Property and Commercialisation and IP Information for PGR Students
- Ethics
- Data Protection and Freedom of Information
- UK Data Archive Research Data Management Guidance
- The Research Gateway: Information and support to help you apply for and manage your research awards.
Data Planning
Writing a data management and sharing plan involves making decisions at the outset of your research to decide which software to use; how to organise, store and manage your data; and what to include in the consent agreements you negotiate.
These will all affect what is possible to do with your data in the future.
What do research funders expect?
Most funders expect a short data planning statement to be submitted with your grant proposal, outlining your plans for data management and data sharing.
You will usually be asked to cover five themes:
- What data will be created?
- How will the data be documented and described?
- How you will manage ethics and IPR?
- What are the plans for data sharing and access?
- What is the strategy for long-term preservation and sustainability?
The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) has collated specific details of UK research funders' data management plan requirements.
Some funders have data management plan templates. For funding applications, use the funder template if available. In other cases, use an institutional template:
- Data Management Plan for Staff Template (staff template guidance)
- Data Management Plan for PGRs Template (PGR template guidance).
The template guidance gives details on how to fill out the form, including examples of what can be included in your answers.
The DCC also provides DMP Online, a web-based tool to help you write your data plan and has other resources to assist in writing data management plans.
For example DMPs, see the DDC's Data plan guidance and examples or see the examples below.
Including RDM Activities in Funding Applications
See Research Data Management Costs.
Further reading
ICPSR Framework for creating a Data Management Plan [WEB, 3 pages approx]
Guidance of what to include in plans with useful example texts.
Who can help me with data planning at the University of Glasgow?
Please get in touch early (at least a week before the deadline) so there is enough time to help.
- The University's Research Data Management Service
- IT services
- Local IT support
IT Services offer backup and filestore for research projects, and your local IT team may be able to provide similar services. Please contact the IT helpdesk with your requirements.
Data centres are also able to help, for example the UK Data Archive and NERC.
Guidance for project supervisors (for projects involving human participants)
Shorter research projects which rely on the participation of human subjects such as those undertaken in Undergraduate and Masters degrees can pose a particular difficulty in terms of good data management and project administration due to the short time-frames involved.
Requirements such as ethical approval and data protection measures apply to these projects in the same way they do to longer research projects, and can take weeks to get in place, so it is important to get started early.
The following tips and resources are intended to help supervisors support their students on short research projects get the best start possible to learn good research practices. These may also be useful to researchers of students on longer research projects.
General tips
Use the Project initiation workflow for research involving personal data to help plan the project set-up and move through the related process in the correct order.
Consider involving your student(s) in your own research by getting them to reanalyse an existing dataset instead of collecting their own data.
Consider whether the research will eventually form part of a published article, thesis or grant application. If so, consideration needs to be given at all planning stages to future data retention and sharing (which would not normally apply to an undergraduate or PGT project).
Data Management tips
Encourage your student to complete a basic data management plan (DMP) for their project. There are very simple DMP templates available for UG and Masters students who don't have data retention and sharing requirements.
There is also a short document which discusses how the University's Code of Good Practice in Research relates to taught students.
Data Protection tips
Start early. Familiarise yourself with the Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) process and the data protection compliance checklist before your student begins their research.
The DP&FOI Office only review DPIAs where the processing is likely to be high risk (this includes all Special Category data). If the research is medium or low risk in nature, a DPIA should still be completed but does not need to be sent to the DP&FOI Office for review. Please check the University’s Information Risk Classifications before submitting a DPIA. You should factor in any compliance requirements, including DPIA reviews, into your student’s research timetable upfront. We recommend at least a two-month lead-in time to ensure all the necessary compliance requirements are met prior to project initiation. A privacy notice will be required if the project collects personal data on research participants. A legal basis for processing personal data must also be identified and documented in your DPIA and communicated to participants in a privacy notice. There are agreed lawful bases for processing personal and special category data for research purposes. Please note that Consent is not an applicable lawful basis for processing personal data for research projects. Consent as a lawful basis is separate to ethical consent, which may still be required.
Consider the method of data collection and storage (e.g. systems, applications, equipment). These must be in line with data protection requirements and University approved systems should be used wherever possible. If it is not possible to use an existing approved tool or service, due diligence checks must be conducted by the student to ensure legal compliance before using a third-party tool to process personal data.
Consider whether any data is shared with third parties or processed outwith the EU. Data sharing agreements may be required with appropriate safeguards and clauses. This does not affect international students who are completing research projects in their home country using University systems (e.g. OneDrive) to store or otherwise process their research data.
Ethics tips
Ensure that consent form and PIS contain information on data retention and sharing if it is thought this might be needed (if research will be included in a published article, thesis or grant application).
Useful Resources
University of Glasgow Data Management webpages
University of Glasgow Ethics webpages
University of Glasgow Research Integrity webpages
Contact research-datamanagement@glasgow.ac.uk for further support.
Examples of Data Management Plans
The Digital Curation Centre has example Data Management Plans and guidance from a variety of funders: DCC Examples and Guidance
A selection of Data Management Plans created by University of Glasgow researchers and shared with the University community can be found by logging in to DMPOnline using your University credentials. Please not that this is not a curated library of examples and they have not necessarily been reviewed by the Research Data Management service.
If you have a Data Management Plan that you would like to contribute as an example, please contact the Research Data Management team.
What to Cover in a Data Management Plan
Here are some pointers of what to include for each of the themes you're typically asked to address:
- What data will be created?
- Note the type and volume of data that will be created, e.g., transcripts, measurements, imaging etc.
- Explain how you will capture the data, e.g., in a numbered, dated notebook.
- What formats do you propose to use and why? E.g., Microsoft Access, Excel or SPSS, as they’re in widespread use.
- How will the data be documented and described?
- What contextual details are needed? E.g., a description of the capture methods and data analysis.
- How will you capture this? E.g., in papers, in a database, in a ‘readme’ text file, in file properties/headers.
- Which standards will you use and why? E.g., refer to data centre recommendations for metadata, controlled vocabularies documentation.
- Are there any encoding guidelines you should follow?
- How you will manage ethics and intellectual property?
- How will you safeguard the privacy of research participants? E.g., by negotiating informed consent.
- Will there be any restrictions and why? E.g., delays while you seek a patent, embargoes as right of first use.
- What are the plans for data sharing and access?
- Who is expected to use the completed dataset(s) and for what purpose?
- How will the data be developed with future users in mind? E.g., choose appropriate formats.
- How will you make the data available? E.g., deposit in a data centre, forward copies on request, create website, publish a book.
- What is the strategy for long-term preservation and sustainability?
- How will you store and back-up the data? E.g., University storage with IT back-up, mirror data on partner's server.
- What are the plans for sustainability? E.g., choose open standards, deposit in data centre.
- Which repository/data centre have you identified as a place to deposit data? Show you've consulted them.
- How will you prepare data for preservation and sharing? Show time and resource budgeted in.
If you are applying to the Medical Research Council, they ask you to note any related policies. We have produced an MRC_Q7_policies_2018 to adapt and use in MRC (or other) applications as relevant.
Legal and Ethical Considerations
If the project you are planning involves data from human participants, in addition to a DMP, you will need to ensure that you have considered data protection requirements and have ethical approval for your research.
This workflow is intended to guide researchers through the process of planning a project involving human participants:
We recommend starting with a data management plan - laying out what data you would like to collect and what you would like to be able to do with the data.
Then consider the legal requirements - complete a DPIA, do you need a data sharing agreements, is your data high risk?
Finally, get your ethics approval in place, making sure to include consent for data retention and sharing where appropriate.
A more detailed version of this workflow with links to all the necessary forms, University Services and guidance is available.