Center for Digital Scholarship

Data Management, Retention, and Sharing

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Data Management, Retention, and Sharing

How can the Library help you with your data?

Are you…

  • writing a grant proposal for a research project or in the process of planning a new research project?
  • interested in disseminating your research data online to other scholars and the public as well as preserving their long-term integrity and access to them?
  • publishing an article or monograph with a publisher that requires the retention, citation, and sharing of the data underlying the publication?
  • looking for a place to deposit your data in order to make it discoverable by other researchers and the public and comply with funder retention requirements?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, the Library is here to help!

Contact Open Science Librarian Andrew Creamer at andrew_creamer@brown.edu for assistance with your data management, retention, and sharing needs.

Data Management and Sharing Plans (DMPs)

Data Management and Sharing Plans (DMPs) outline how a researcher or research team will plan for the documentation, management, and retention of the digital research products (data, metadata, and code) that they create or collect throughout their projects. They also outline how these research products will be disseminated and made available to the public and to other researchers.

Many Research Sponsors Require DMPs

An increasing number of federal and private research sponsors require the creation of data management and sharing plans (DMPs). The Library can help you create a DMP that satisfies the research sponsor’s specific requirements.

Important DMP Elements

  • Open and preservation-friendly formats for collecting, storing, and sharing data
  • Community standards used to describe data necessary for discovery and reuse
  • Plans for versioning, storing, and backing up digital files
  • Plans for securing data containing identifiers or content posing a risk to privacy and confidentiality
  • The plans for long-term retention and access to digital research products
  • Assigned terms of use for re-distribution and production of derivatives

Sharing, Publishing and Citing Research Data

  • Clarify rights and ownership and obtain any necessary permissions.
  • Outline the terms of use.
  • Choose the appropriate format and repository for long-term preservation and access.
  • Use international standards for describing and structuring these works and collections in order to make them discoverable and accessible by intended users.

Supported Applications

DMPTool

The DMPTool is an online tool for writing data management plans for sponsored research. 

To use DMPTool, go to DMPTool.org and select Brown University from the institution drop down menu. Log in using your Brown University username and password. Select the funder associated with your grant proposal. The DMPTool will guide you through the writing of a plan by using a template based on that funder’s specific requirements. 

You can create an account and save and store your plans on the site or download and save the files to your own computer. Bring your drafted plan into CDS for review!

LabArchives@Brown Electronic Lab Notebook

LabArchives@Brown is an online electronic lab notebook (ELN). An ELN allows you to create folders, subfolders, and pages to document your research. 

To use the LabArchives@Brown ELN, go to the Research Data Management and Sharing libguide and log in using your Brown username and password. 

With this tool, you can:

  • Create as many personal or shared research notebooks as you want.
  • Upload any file type to LabArchives@Brown.
  • Add tags to files, pages, and folders to help with searching across notebooks.
  • Create templates for standardizing the description of data.
  • Share any page or folder with specific collaborators and add collaborator roles to enable or restrict their access privileges to read-only or read and write.

Brown Open Science Framework (OSF)

Brown OSF is an online project management and dissemination tool aimed at making research more open and transparent. 

To use Brown OSF, go to OSF Institutions - Brown and log in with your Brown University username and password. 

With the OSF platform you can:

  • Create and document a project from beginning to end.
  • Associate the project with Brown.
  • Document every addition and edit with an automatic timestamp that records the name of the person making the contribution or edit, what type of contribution and change was made, and when it was made.
  • Add specific collaborators to your project.
  • Make your project private or public.
  • Enable public commenting or contributions to a project.
  • Add as many components as you like.
  • Store files on OSF or link out to files that you have stored in other tools such as GitHub, DropBox, and Google Drive, among others.

Brown Digital Repository

The Brown Digital Repository (BDR) is the Library’s preservation archive and dissemination platform for both individual and collections of digital research products (data sets, metadata, and code) online. 

Brown faculty and students can use the BDR to make their data available to the Brown community and/or the public. Deposited data sets are assigned their own catalog record with customized information describing the object and a unique URL. Users can request a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) that they and others can use to cite their data and their location in a publication. The BDR also provides an API for making stored content and structured data available through a website.

In addition to making your work more discoverable, the BDR is an ideal long-term storage option because of its mission to preserve the integrity of and access to deposited files. 

Contact

For inquiries regarding textual and quantitative analysis, please contact cds_info@brown.edu.