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This regular training course introduces PhD students to research support available during the course of their studies. It is relevant for all PhD students, whatever the stage reached in their project and is applicable to all disciplines.

The half-day session focuses on Research Integrity, Research Data Management, Data Protection, Research Ethics, Open Access and Research IT. The course highlights good practices in these areas, explains the expectations of researchers and points them to relevant UCL support services.

The next session will take place on Wednesday 30/01/2019 (2-5pm).

Booking information is available on the Doctoral Skills Development Programme website.

All applications for the UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowships require a data management plan. As the umbrella organisation of the UK’s major Research Councils, there is an expectation that all UKRI-funded research is ‘to be made available to the research community in a timely and responsible manner unless there are exceptional reasons why this cannot happen’. Researchers are also advised to consult the Research Council common principles on data policy as this provides the overarching framework for the individual UK research councils.

Researchers should use the template and guidance provided by the URKI. Plans can be up to three-page long but can be as little as a quarter of a page of A4 for less complex research projects. The data management plan must also demonstrate how ‘the applicant will meet, or already meets their responsibilities for research data quality, sharing and security’.

You can also find a template for the UKRI data management plan on DMP Online.

Further Resources

• UKRI Data Policy
• UKRI guidance on best practice in the management of research data

Oral history can be a complicated beast when it comes to issues surrounding consent and ethics. Firstly, oral history is considered both a methodology and a field of study so this inevitably complicates things for researchers. As a field of study that has developed into its current form over the past fifty years, oral history has always concerned itself with giving a voice to the powerless, the marginalised and disenfranchised in society. As the field has developed over the years, so too have questions about the practice of oral history. After all, the very foundations of oral history relies on talking and listening to our subjects in order to record and preserve their memories for future generations. Yet, the academic pursuit of oral history has also raised numerous questions about the types of histories we record and the dynamics at play between researchers and their subjects. Indeed consent and ethics have always been a central concern of oral history. But when it comes to addressing these issues, oral historians need to strongly bear in mind that they are not only abiding by the professional standards of the field but also respecting the wholly collaborative nature of the interview. This guide will aim to provide an overview of the debates concerning consent in oral history and the issues it raises in research data management for researchers at UCL and beyond.

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This guide will aim to provide some useful advice for students on finding data to re-use during their research projects.

Data Resources Online

You may want to start by using UCL Explore to search for research studies based on secondary datasets. From there, you can consult the Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data.org) – a global repository of research data. It is also best kept in mind that different datasets require different permissions. If you are planning to use safeguarded or controlled access data, you will need to abide by additional conditions for accessing it. For example, this may include specific forms of citation, depositor permission to registration and authentication of the users of the data. There are plenty of online courses to help you navigate your way through the use of digital datasets. The University of Edinburgh run an online research data management training programme called MANTRA to help researchers learn how to manage their digital data. Furthermore, the UK Data Service provides a range of dataset and topic guides along with video tutorials on how to use data.

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The rapid growth of social media has inevitably led to a wealth of data into all aspects of our everyday lives. At the same time, this has been accompanied by concerns about how we use data harvested from social media sources. There is already a growing literature out there on the ethical implications of using social media and so this FAQ will aim to briefly summarise some of key arguments that researchers will need to consider.

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