Guest post by Dr Christiana McMahon, Research Data Support Officer, in celebration of International Love Data Week 2024.

From that spark of an idea through to publishing research findings, the Research Data Management team have once again been on-hand to support staff and students.

What’s been happening?

A new version of the Research Data Repository is now available simplifying the process of archiving and preserving research outputs here at UCL for the longer-term.

In 2023 we published 200 items 151 of which were datasets.

Graph to show items published in the UCL Research Repository in 2023.

Over the past year…

• The most downloaded record was: Griffiths, David; Boehm, Jan (2019). SynthCity Dataset – Area 1. University College London. Dataset.
• The most viewed record was: Heenan, Thomas; Jnawali, Anmol; Kok, Matt; Tranter, Thomas; Tan, Chun; Dimitrijevic, Alexander; et al. (2020). Lithium-ion Battery INR18650 MJ1 Data: 400 Electrochemical Cycles (EIL-015). University College London. Dataset.
• The most cited record was: Manescu, Petru; Shaw, Mike; Elmi, Muna; Zajiczek, Lydia; Claveau, Remy; Pawar, Vijay; et al. (2020). Giemsa Stained Thick Blood Films for Clinical Microscopy Malaria Diagnosis with Deep Neural Networks Dataset. University College London. Dataset.

More information is available about the UCL Research Data Repository.  Alternatively, check our FAQs.

Data Management Plan Reviews

The RDM team can review data management plans providing researchers with feedback in-line with UCL’s expectations and funding agency requirements where these apply. In 2023, we reviewed 32 data management plans covering over 10 different funding agencies. More information is available in our website.

Mini-tutorial: Research data lifecycle

The RDM team often refer to the research data lifecycle, but what is it? Essentially, these are the different stages of the research process from planning and preparation through to archiving your research outputs, making them discoverable to the wider research community and members of the public.

The four stages:

1: Get ready – You’ve had an idea for a research study so it’s time to start making plans and getting prepared. Have you considered writing a data management plan?

• Remember, if you are in receipt of external funding, there may be data management requirements to consider.
• Feel free to reach out to Open Science and Research Support to assist you.

2: Let’s go – You are now actively researching putting all those research plans into action.

• Don’t forget to revisit your data management plan and update it to reflect your latest decision making.
• It’s also useful to consider documenting your research as you progress.

3: Ta-dah – The research is complete and it’s time to archive your research outputs to preserve them for the longer-term.

• Aim to utilise subject-specific archives and repositories where possible.
• Creating a metadata record in a public facing online catalogue with links to any related publications can be useful to building online networks of linked research outputs.
• Consider making your research outputs as openly accessible as possible remembering that controlling or restricting access is fine as long as it is justified and there is a set data access protocol in place to facilitate a data access request.
• Did you know you can archive most research outputs in the UCL Research Data Repository?

4: Wow! I think I can use this – making your research discoverable to others for potential reuse can help to maximise research opportunities

• Consider having an agreement in place between parties before sharing research outputs – issues like copyright, IP, commercialisation of (subsequent) work may be discussed here.
• For secondary researchers, time to head back to the start to begin the research process.

And so the research data lifecycle begins again!

Get involved!

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!