The terms "Data Management," "Data Management Plan," and "Data Management Planning" are easily confused. Here are their definitions as they apply to your research here at Argonne:
Data Management refers to all the activities you engage in that involve the collection, storage, organization, and analysis of data during the course of your research. This includes everything from the planning stages at the inception of a project to the distribution of data and its preservation for future use at the end. The new requirements issued by the Department of Energy Office of Science state that upon publication, a small portion of your data that supports your publication must be made publicly available.
A Data Management Plan is a document that is created during the planning and funding stages of a project that describes how you intend to work with your data, and how you intend to comply with the DOE requirements upon publication of your results.
Data Management Planning is the act of determining what data your research is likely to produce and how best to store, preserve and interact with that data. During this phase, the primary investigator should determine what data will ultimately be shared publicly and how that release will occur. The result of Data Management Planning is the Data Management Plan.
MANTRA is a free, online non-assessed course with guidelines to help you understand and reflect on how to manage the digital data you collect throughout your research. It has been crafted for the use of post-graduate students, early career researchers, and also information professionals. 9 online units. Published by the University of Edinburgh
