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Research Data Management: Further Guidance

“Our resources are free to use and contain everything you need to engage effectively in research data management, digital curation, and data preservation activities.”

Key contacts at the University of Hull

Planning for the preservation and dissemination of your data in line with research funder/publisher terms:

  • rdm@hull.ac.uk  (Kirstyn Radford, Research Outputs Specialist, Brynmor Jones Library)

Data protection, research integrity and ethics (Sharepoint sites for University of Hull researchers):


Data ownership, licensing and knowledge exchange:


Data handling, including secure file storage, software installation and use of the University's High Performance Computer (VIPER) for processing high volumes of research data with low levels of sensitivity:


Hull Health Trials Unit provides specialist support for clinical research, including mediated access to NHS data, and services to facilitate storage and processing of sensitive data, such as the Data Safe Haven:

Introducing the Digital Curation Centre

Funded by JISC and based primarily in Edinburgh, the Digital Curation Centre "is an internationally-recognised centre of expertise in digital curation with a focus on building capability and skills for research data management".  This short video (12 minutes) introduces their resources and services for researchers in the UK and elsewhere.  


Further information about the Digital Curation Centre's Training opportunities, including discipline-specific resources and recommendations for external providers.

Self-study materials

A selection of learning resources developed for the academic researcher:

Understanding RDM terminology

In-house training for University of Hull researchers

Start from the University's e-Learning Catalogue for access to the online modules (for University staff only):

The University's Research Culture programme includes workshops covering data management planning, intellectual property and open research, for all researchers:  browse their calendar of upcoming events for details and booking.

Further reading on RDM good practice

Hoyt, C.T., Gyori, B.M., Sci Data 11, 547.   "An actionable road map to creating and maintaining resources that... can continue to be used and maintained by the community that they serve".

A handbook written by a team of 40 collaborators from UK and EU research institutions, to help HEIs integrate FAIR data management principles into research skills programmes and research support/governance activity.  Written in an informal style suitable for adaptation into guides and teaching materials; free to download with a CC-BY licence.

Written for authors submitting papers to AGU journals, but relevant to all researchers in STEM disciplines. Advice on selecting and describing data, choosing a repository, preparing a data availability statement, and citing data (including your own).

Targeted at early career researchers, this resource from the health and medical research funder Wellcome Trust includes how-to guides, case studies, myth-busting and tips.

A plain English overview of the legal principles which apply to the collection, processing and retention of personal data, including legitimate bases for retaining data, and data subjects' rights.

Written by experts at the UK Data Archive, this book is the globally-reaching guide for any postgraduate student or researcher looking to build their data management skills.

Colavizza et al, PLOS One 15(4): e0230416

A 200 page manual from the Consortium of European Social Sciences Data Archives, to help social science researchers make their research data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR).

Published by ALLEA (All European Academies), readable and practical recommendations.

A blog post from UK-based environmental monitoring business Microgenetics, outlining the ALCOA principles for data integrity (Attributable, Legible, Contemporaneous, Original and Accurate).  This framework was originally introduced by the US Food and Drug Administration in the 1990s and is now adopted by health and medical regulatory agencies worldwide. 

Ana Sofia Figueiredo, Frontiers in Public Health 2017; 5: 327

Mark D. Wilkinson et al, Scientific Data 2016;  3: 160018

This UK-based charity's publications "provide authoritative guidance on a variety of digital preservation topics chosen by Coalition members... in an accessible and easily digestible manner". Recent topics include a series of guidance notes on preserving different format types (GIS, audio, moving images, email, spreadsheets etc).

Published by CODATA, a branch of the International Science Council, the scope of the open access Data Science Journal includes "descriptions of data systems, their implementations and their publication, applications, infrastructures, software, legal, reproducibility and transparency issues, the availability and usability of complex datasets, and with a particular focus on the principles, policies and practices for open data".  See also the CODATA Blog for more researchers' stories.

Further reading on RDM policy

An overview of open research data policy and infrastructure landscape in UK, commissioned by Jo Johnson at the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

Published by SPARC Europe, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.
See also their Open Data Resources (2017-), a collection of literature for open data policy-makers and advocates.

"The ODI was co-founded in 2012 by the inventor of the web Sir Tim Berners-Lee and artificial intelligence expert Sir Nigel Shadbolt to show the value of open data, and to advocate for the innovative use of open data to affect positive change across the globe. We work with companies and governments to build an open, trustworthy data ecosystem".

Launched in 2013 by the European Commission with US and Australian government departments, "with the goal of building the social and technical infrastructure to enable open sharing and re-use of data".  Resources include Working Groups for specific disciplines and functions, and infrastructure solutions such as metadata standards and model workflows.