Why worry about data management?

• Why should you spend time worrying about data management? Here are a few reasons why we think it is important.

  • Save Time – By spending a little bit of up-front time and planning and organising the data you produce you will save time and resources in the long run.
  • Increase your efficiency – If you document your data properly whenever you or someone else comes to it they will be able to understand it quickly and without difficulty.  Thus saving time and increasing efficiency.
  • Preserve and protect your data – It is relatively easy to produce data that will be useful only the once and for a very specific purpose.  Learn how to ensure that the data can be useful again and again, and how to make sure that it is never lost.
  • Data is an output in its own right – that’s right; data itself is increasingly being seen as an important output of research.  If shared, it can better enable researchers.  The REF (Research Excellence Framework) now takes note of it. 
  • Meet grant requirements – Many funding bodies now require that researchers archive data as well as the resulting publications as part of their project.  Good data management will make this easy rather than a last minute chore.
  • Open Access – In the UK government policy has moved to an open access framework.  Producing and making available data is a vital part of this process.  Journals are increasingly making room for data alongside articles, for example. 
  • Transparency/research integrity – If required you have all the documents and materials easily available making your research more transparent if questioned.

  There are of course other reasons but we don’t wish to bore you, especially at such an early stage. 

• You might like to listen to this video where Professor Glenn Burgess (University of Hull) talks a bit more about why data management is important.

• In this next video Dr Simon Trafford (Institute of Historical Research) provides his view of why managing data is not only important, but essentially what we, as historians, do anyway.

• Finally, Professor Matthew Davies (Centre for Metropolitan History and Institute of Historical research) offers his opinion about why data management is important.