Best Practices for Managing Data in your Research

Date: 2 October 2024

TIFU by losing a ton of data for my research – Have you ever seen a description like this on Reddit? Are your desktop and downloads folders a jumble of files named Data-finalFINAL-USETHISONE? Is all of your lab’s data stored on a single drive? Join research data management services and learn how investing a small amount of time in organizing your data now can save you a lot of time and prevent future headaches. In this introductory workshop, learn about research data management best practices. We will go over best practices for data planning, storage, organization, preservation, and sharing.

By the end of the session participants will be empowered to: Produce a plan for their data, organize and document their data consistently, store and back-up their data securely, and select an appropriate data repository for archival and sharing.

Details: This virtual workshop will be recorded. The recording will be posted to the Sherman Centre’s Online Learning Catalogue. 

Facilitator Bio: 

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Danica Evering holds expansive experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.