Managing Research Data Digitally is a practical, beginner-friendly course for researchers, postgraduate students, librarians, research support staff, and anyone involved in digital research projects who wants to manage research data more effectively. The course shows how good research data management supports reproducibility, efficiency, credibility, compliance, security, and long-term reuse across disciplines.
The course begins by helping learners define research data in their own disciplinary context and understand the research data lifecycle, from planning and collection to processing, analysis, storage, sharing, preservation, and reuse. Learners examine the risks of poor data management and the benefits of clear, proportionate practices that improve research quality and reduce avoidable problems.
Next, learners develop practical day-to-day skills for organizing, documenting, and protecting digital research data. They create logical folder structures, apply clear file-naming conventions, use simple documentation tools such as READMEs and codebooks, and adopt basic versioning practices. They also learn how to select suitable storage, backup, access control, and security approaches, including when working with personal or sensitive data and when responding to ethical, legal, and privacy requirements.
Finally, learners explore how to make data more FAIR—findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable—by choosing appropriate repositories, formats, metadata, licenses, citations, and data availability statements. The course concludes by helping learners integrate planning, organization, protection, sharing, and preservation into an end-to-end research data management workflow and produce a practical capstone artifact they can adapt for a real or sample project.
