The AUC Woodruff Library is committed to providing and supporting AUC students and faculty's learning, teaching, and research needs and advocates for the free exchange of and public access to ideas. This guide intends to outline practices for managing research data and guide researchers on locating data management resources. Our goal is to guide our institution members to the tools and information to facilitate their research data needs and help find any additional information or resources required to fulfill Research Data Management (RDM) requirements including access to the DMPTool. For further assistance or Library service information, choose from among the links below.
In the Code of Federal Regulations (2 CFR 215.36), "research data" is defined as: "the recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as necessary to validate research findings, but not any of the following: preliminary analyses, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer reviews, [or] communications with colleagues. This 'recorded' material excludes physical objects (e.g., laboratory specimens)."
Types of research data include:
Some Datasets can be found at:
Research Data Management (or RDM) is the organization and care of the data collected during the research life cycle. This process includes decisions about collecting, naming, storing, preserving and sharing data. DataONE (Data Observation Network for Earth) created a visualization of the phases that data goes through during a research project.
Below is the DataONE Data Lifecycle. Click on any cycle phase for in-depth information.
Throughout this cycle, it is important that data is described properly. Metadata, which is data about data, makes data easier to locate and use. Researchers should use the Research Data Metadata Standards Catalog to find the metadata standard that is appropriate for your research data project.