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Research Data Management

Learn how to manage your research data throughout the data lifecycle: including data management plans, data organization, file formats, as well as data sharing/re-use.

describing your data

Creating and maintaining complete and accurate documentation and metadata is an essential part of data management. Maintaining good metadata ensures discoverability and longevity of your data. 

Metadata is "data about data" and describes the key attributes of each data element or collection of elements. Using a standardized metadata schema improves interoperability. Also, it's typically a requirement for depositing data in a repository or when publishing in a research journal.

All metadata standards provide standardized structured information explaining:

  • Purpose
  • Origin
  • Time References
  • Geographic Locations
  • Creator
  • Access Conditions and terms of use of data

The graphic below demonstrates the wide variety of discipline specific metadata standards.

Metadata Concept Map by Amanda Tarbet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License:

For a full list of metadata standards you can visit:

Digital Curation Centers Disciplinary Metadata List http://www.dcc.ac.uk/drupal/resources/metadata-standards