Why Manage Your Data?
What's the rush?
Good data management is the foundation for good research. Today, more and more publishers and funding agencies are requiring researchers to share their data. Having a data managment plan fullfills agency requirements and makes your data easier to share.
What's the benefit to managing my data?
- Saves time
- Can focus on research not user requests
- Simplifies your research
- Meets grant requirements (i.e., NSF mandate)
- Lets others understand your data
- Makes sharing/preserving data easier
- Takes less time to get data ready to share
- Avoid catastrophic loss in the event of a disaster
- Lets your work live into the future
What types of data are we talking about?
Data can mean many different things, but there are typically four main categories that it can be sorted into for management purposes: Observational, Experimental, Simulation, and Derived or Compiled. The category that you choose will then have an effect upon the choices that you make throughout the rest of your data management plan. For more about the categories of data check out the section File Formats & Data Types.
