Postgraduate Data Management Plan Guidance
This document is intended to help you complete a data management plan, and gives you some
extra things to consider that aren’t mentioned in the template. You might not know the answers
to everything — if there’s something you’re not sure about, make a note in Section 6.3 of the plan
to find out. You may wish to discuss some or all of it with your supervisor.
Write as much or as little as you feel you need to answer each question. The text in grey on the
template gives examples of possible answers — use or replace it as needed and delete any
suggestions that aren’t appropriate to your data.
Data Management Plans, Data Sharing Statements and other similarly-named documents are now
required by most research funders. Increasing numbers of universities, including the University of
Bath, require them as well. This template has been specifically designed to help you plan the
aspects of data management relevant to a doctoral research project.
1. Overview
This section is for administrative purposes, to make it clear which project the plan is about.
“Project context” need only be two or three sentences summarising your project’s aims.
2. Defining your data
Almost all research builds on sources of information to develop and justify conclusions. This
information may be newly created, gathered from existing sources or a combination of the two;
these are your research data. This section helps you to think about what ‘data’ means for your
research.
The answers you enter in this section will help you identify what resources, such as storage, you
will need to manage your data.
2.1 Where do your data come from?
Are your data gathered from experiments? From literature? From existing data available from
online data repositories or other researchers’ websites? Or from somewhere else?
What equipment or instruments do you use? How do you capture observation or conversations?
2.2 What formats are your data in?
Are the file formats that you’ll use in widespread use or standard file types in your discipline?
What software is required to access and analyse the data? Is it free/open, and if not are
alternatives available? How would you access your data if the university no longer had a license
for the software you currently use? The UK Data Service has a list of recommended file formats for
commonly used file types: http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/manage-data/format/recommendedformats.aspx
2.3 How often do you get new data?
Continuously over a long period or from separate one-off events such as experiments or
interviews? How many experiments per week or month? How will this change over time? Thinking
about when you create your data will help you to estimate how much data you’ll generate in total.
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2.4 How much data do you generate?
Try to give this in MB/GB/TB. Start with how much you have so far and try to estimate how this
will grow for the rest of the project, based on your answer to the previous question.
It doesn't need to be too precise and the following categories might help as a guide: 500GB or less,
500GB to 1TB, More than 1TB (estimate to the nearest 5 or 10 TB as appropriate).
If you keep data in a non-digital format, such as a lab notebook or questionnaire responses,
consider how many notebooks or filing cabinet drawers you might need.
Tip: You can find out the size of an existing file or folder by right-clicking on it in Windows Explorer
or Mac Finder and selecting Properties… (Windows) or Get info… (Mac).
2.5 Who owns the data you generate?
The university legally owns most data generated by students it funds, although your “scholarly
output” such as presentations and articles remain yours. If you’re not sure, check your studentship
agreement, ask your supervisor or check the University’s Intellectual Property policy (which covers
student IP): http://www.bath.ac.uk/ipls/legal.bho/ippolicy.html.
3. Looking after your data
The answers you enter in this section will help you identify how to keep your data safe, and will
also make it easier for both you and possibly other researchers to make use of your data at the
end of your project.
3.1 Where do you store your data?
If you have more than one copy of your data (say on a laptop and desktop computer) you should
decide which is the primary copy, as this avoids confusion later. It’s surprisingly easy to lose data
because you can’t remember where you put it. Computing Services provide guidance on data
storage: http://www.bath.ac.uk/bucs/aboutbucs/policies-guidelines/guidelines_storage.html.
3.2 How are your data backed up?
An ideal backup strategy should follow the 3-2-1 rule: at least 3 copies, on at least 2 different
media (e.g. disk and tape), with at least 1 kept in a different physical location. By far the easiest
way to do this is to make the university’s research (X:drive) or home (H:drive) storage your
primary storage area and let Computing Services do the hard work for you. Don’t forget that paper
copies of data, such as notebooks, can be scanned directly to your University home drive (see
http://www.bath.ac.uk/library/services/copy/scanningandfaxing.html).
Sometimes backups don’t work as you expect, so you should check regularly that everything’s
correct. If you use the X: or H: drives, this will be handled for you. If you manage your own
backups it could be as simple as checking that your files are up to date and will still open correctly.
3.3 How do you structure and name your folders and files?
Planning this is another good technique to save time (and stress) later. You might wish to organise
your data according to the date it was collected in YYYYMMDD format, which will help your
operating system to sort your files by date, or according to a key aspect of the conditions the data
were collected under.
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3.4 How do you manage different versions of your files?
In this context “versions” of a file doesn’t simply refer to multiple copies (such as you might make
when backing up), but updated copies when the contents of a file are changed.
How do your data change? Do you update or add data to existing files, or do you create new files
when you add to or modify the data? Do your experiments automatically overwrite existing files
and how would you preserve files from previous run?
How do you differentiate between different versions of a file? Do you use file naming (such as
appending v1, v1.1, v2 to the end of file names) or version control software/repositories to
manage changes to your data?
3.5 What additional information is required to understand the data?
What would you need to know to reproduce the data or to write up your methods and results at
the end of your study? If someone else in your lab or a reader of your papers wanted to replicate
your analyses, what would they need to know? If you have used abbreviations or codes in your
data, how will others know what they mean?
This type of detail is particularly important to record because it is often glossed over in published
outputs, where the general method and conclusions are more important than the fine detail.
Once you’ve decided what information should be recorded, you should think about how best to
associate it with the data. You may be able to embed this information in the data or files, but it is
generally easiest to record information in a “readme” file that you store with your data. You could
think about setting up a template to make this quicker for new data.
4. Archiving your data
This section will help you to plan how you will ensure your important research data are preserved
at the end of your project.
4.1 What data should be kept or destroyed after the end of your project?
Must everything be kept, or just what you used for your thesis or publications? What secondary
use might there be for your data, either on its own or combined with additional data? What might
others need/want?
If your data are very large but easy and inexpensive to reproduce accurately (e.g. simulation
results), consider whether recreating or storing them for a long period would be the cheaper
option. What would you need to keep so that you could guarantee the reproduction was
accurate?
You should also consider whether there are any legal or contractual restrictions on you keeping
some of your data. Your participants’ informed consent might only grant you permission to retain
an anonymised version of the data but not the raw data containing personal identifiers. Your
sponsors might only have granted you permission to use some data on the condition that you
destroy it at the end of your study.
4.2 For how long should data be kept after the end of your project?
If you receive funding from a Research Council or similar funding body, they may stipulate how
long your data must be kept for after your project ends. For example, EPSRC requires that data
underlying published articles must be kept for 10 years from the date of last access. You can check
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your funder’s requirement at http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/data/policy/funder-datapolicies.html.
4.3 Where will the data you keep be archived?
Many subject areas and disciplines have specialised archives to encourage the preservation and
re-use of particular types of data. Your supervisor and others in your lab, group or department
should be able to tell you if these exist, or you could search through http://www.re3data.org/. You
may well have used such an archive to look up data for your own research.
Alternatively, if you publish a research article during your PhD, you may be able to archive some of
the data that underpins your findings as supporting information.
If none of these options are suitable, the University has developed an institutional Research Data
Archive for the preservation and publication of research data, searchable at
http://researchdata.bath.ac.uk/. Guidance on using the archive is available at
http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/data/sharing-reuse/archive.bho/.
4.4 When will data be moved into the archive?
Will you wait until you’ve completed your final thesis corrections before you archive your final
dataset or will your data be archived as soon as you’ve completed your analyses?
Depending on your funder’s policy or any journals you might have published your findings in, you
may be required to archive your data at the same time as you publish any results based upon
them.
4.5 Who is responsible for moving data to the archive and maintaining them?
If you plan to deposit your data in a specialist data archive, either you or your supervisor will
probably be responsible for handing over the data, but once there the archive will have
procedures in place for maintaining them.
5. Sharing your data
This section will help you understand who you should share your data with at different times
during your project. This is particularly important for publicly-funded research, as funding bodies
are increasingly expecting final datasets to be published, in addition to traditional journal
publications. Publishing data can enable it to be re-used for new research and also helps to
support the integrity of the academic record, because analyses described in papers may be
reproduced.
5.1 Who else has a right to see or use this data during the project?
During your project you might be using data that are covered by confidentiality agreements, the
Data Protection Act, or that you’ve not yet published the results from. During this time you will
probably need to restrict access to the data to yourself, your supervisor(s) and possibly members
of your research group or external collaborators.
If you receive a request to access your data under the Freedom of Information Act, you must refer
this directly to the University’s Freedom of Information Officer at freedom-ofinformation@bath.ac.uk rather than attempting to handle it yourself.
5.2 What data should or shouldn’t be shared openly and why?
Sometimes there are good reasons for keeping even publicly-funded research data private, such as
participant confidentiality or commercial sensitivity. Data can be kept private if they are covered
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the Data Protection Act, licence restrictions or contractual confidentiality clauses. There might also
be ethical reasons why data should not be released, where it might put people or the environment
(such as the location of endangered species) at risk.
If your original data can’t be shared, consider whether a redacted or anonymised version might be
shareable. For example, you would not be able to share the raw audio recordings of interviews
but, with informed consent, may be able to share an anonymised version of the transcript. You
may also need to prevent your data from being made publicly available to allow you time to
commercialise your research or file patent applications.
5.3 Who should have access to your final dataset and under what conditions?
At the end of your research your final dataset can be shared to different extents: it doesn’t have to
be all or nothing. For example, if your data can’t be released immediately, could it be released at a
later date after a defined embargo period? If your data contains information that must be kept
confidential, could access be granted to other researchers if they agree to certain conditions and,
if so, what conditions are these?
Some specialist data archives provide mechanisms whereby only registered or authorised users
can download data files. There are also different types of licences that can be applied to data that
define what users are permitted to do with the data. If you need advice on access restrictions that
might apply to your final dataset contact research-data@bath.ac.uk before you publish your data.
5.4 How will you share your final dataset?
If you submit your final dataset to a specialist data archive, the archive will typically enable your
data to be published, either openly without restriction, under licences and terms of use, or subject
to users registering their contact details or verifying that they are researchers.
If your supervisor retains a copy of your dataset at the end of your project, it would be advisable
for them to handle future requests to access the data.
6. Implementing your plan
6.1 Who is responsible for making sure this plan is followed?
You may wish to discuss and agree this with your supervisor. You should also check the
University’s Research Data Policy http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/data/policy/research-datapolicy.html.
6.2 How often will this plan be reviewed and updated?
Once you’ve completed your plan you will need to implement it, so you should schedule regular
reviews with your supervisor to discuss progress. You can also agree updates to your plan to
reflect unforeseen changes in your research.
6.3 What actions have you identified from the rest of this plan?
List them here with timescales for their completion.
6.4 What policies are relevant to your project?
University policies that might be relevant to your project are listed below, together with resources
that will help you find your funders’ policy.
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University of Bath Research Data Policy:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/data/policy/research-data-policy.html
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University of Bath IT Security Policy:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/bucs/aboutbucs/policies-guidelines/policies-it-security.html
University of Bath Intellectual Property Policy:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/ordinances/22.pdf
University of Bath guidance on Funder Data Policies:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/data/policy/funder-data-policies.html
6.5 What further information do you need to carry out these actions?
The list below provides sources of additional information on research data management. You can
also ask your supervisor or other members of your research group for advice, or contact the
Library data management team at research-data@bath.ac.uk.
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University of Bath research data website: http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/data
University of Bath Code of Good Practice in Research Integrity:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/opp/docs/code-of-good-practice-in-research-integrity.pdf
University of Bath Data Protection Guidance for Academic Research:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/data-protection/guidance/academic-research/index.html
University of Bath guidance on Research Integrity and Ethics:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/governance/ethics/
University of Bath Information Security Framework:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/university-secretary/guidance-policies/information_security.html
University of Bath guidance on Freedom of Information and academic research:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/foi/dealing-with-foi-requests/implications-of-foi/index.html#id2
UK Data Service general guidance on data management:
http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/manage-data.aspx
UK Data Service guidance on anonymisation and consent:
http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/manage-data/legal-ethical.aspx
Digital Curation Centre resources:
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources
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