The Research Data Management team and Research IT Services jointly run regular drop-in sessions.  These sessions are open to all UCL research staff and research students. 

Someone from the Research Data Management team will be there to support you with

• data management planning
• best practice in storing and sharing data
• complying with funder requirements

– at all stages of the research lifecycle.

If you’d like to come along to one of drop-in sessions, please contact the RDM team at lib-researchsupport@ucl.ac.uk with a summary of your research data query beforehand.

Representatives from all of the RITS service areas teams will also be on hand to answer questions or problems related the following areas:

• research programming
• workflow automation
• finding tools and services for your research programmes
• high performance computing
• handling large datasets
• handling personal and GDPR special category data
• data storage

For RITS queries, there’s no need to book, but the RITS team can make sure there’ll be someone there to help with your problem if you email rits@ucl.ac.uk, ideally two days before the session.

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A format is essentially the form your data will take once you collect and archive it. Researchers are strongly advised to think very carefully about the final format their data will take so that it can be preserved for future use.

There are two main two main categories of files – proprietary and non-proprietary formats. Proprietary formats are more limited as they only work with the software provided by the creator of that data. On the other hand, non-proprietary formats can be used by anyone, are usually free of charge and therefore have more utility for future researchers. Plus open formats provide instant and easy access to data. In most cases, you should aim for your data to take the following formats:

1. Non-proprietary
2. Unencrypted
3. Uncompressed
4. Open, documented standard
5. Commonly used by your research community
6. Use common character encodings – ASCII, Unicode, UTF-8

There will always be cases where you will inevitably need to change the format of your data during the course of your research. This is why it is important that you provide further details about the format your data will take in your DMP and any features that may be lost once you convert it for archiving. Open formats may not support all of the original functionality of proprietary formats so you must take steps to hold on to both your raw and converted data sets. Some funders may also have specific requirements surrounding the final form your data should take so be sure to check their policies before committing to any set format.

Further links

• Scientific Data Formats: http://justsolve.archiveteam.org/index.php/Scientific_Data_formats
• LOC: http://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/
• Digital Preservation Coalition: https://www.dpconline.org/handbook/technical-solutions-and-tools/file-formats-and-standards

UCL Library Services is pleased to invite UCL staff to an afternoon of information and discussion about the UK Data Service (UKDS).

The UKDS is funded by the ESRC to meet the data needs of researchers, students and teachers in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Its collection includes major UK government-sponsored surveys, cross-national surveys, longitudinal studies, UK census data, international aggregate, business data, and qualitative data.

Participants will learn how to access these collections as well as how to deposit their own research data and sources in the UKDS repository, ReShare. During the drop-in session participants will be able to ask questions about data sharing, ESRC data management plans, consent procedures, data storage, encryption and more.

The event will take place in the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) Common Ground.

See the programme and book your place.

The Research Data Management and Research IT teams will run more regular drop-in sessions in 2017-18. These sessions are open to all UCL research staff and research students and will be attended by someone from the Research Data Management team as well as representatives from all of the RITS service areas; if you have any questions or problems related the following areas, you should find someone there who can help:

• research programming
• workflow automation
• finding tools and services for your research programmes
• high performance computing
• handling large datasets
• handling sensitive data
• data storage
• Research Data Management (including Data Management Plans).

There’s no need to book, but we can make sure there’ll be someone there to help with your problem if you email rits@ucl.ac.uk ideally two days before the session.

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The Research Data Management team will be working with colleagues from Research IT to run regular drop-in sessions for all research staff and research students where you can come and get support and advice. The sessions will be attended by someone from the Research Data Management team as well as representatives from all of the RITS service areas, so if you have any problems related the following areas, you should find someone there who can help:

• research programming
• workflow automation
• finding tools and services for your research programmes
• high performance computing
• handling large datasets
• handling sensitive data
• data storage
• Research Data Management (including Data Management Plans).

There’s no need to book, but we can make sure there’ll be someone there to help with your problem if you email rits@ucl.ac.uk ideally two days before the session.

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A hard drive sitting on your bookshelf might be useful for storing your data, but it is not reliable or secure enough for long-term preservation (memory or USB sticks are even worst). For safer options to preserve data, see our guide on how to store & archive your research data (whether digital or not).

If you really need to use an external hard drive, here are a few emergency tips for taking care of your drive and make sure that you can still read the data in the coming years.

At the minimum you should: (more…)

UCL Research Data Services provides an institution-wide storage service on a project basis, and are happy to advise on potential costs for large amounts of storage for new projects. When registering a project for the Research Data Storage service, we ask you to estimate your data storage needs but these are changeable over the period of the allocation (as are the members of the project). Generally, 5TB per project is allocated unless other capacity is requested.  If you need more than 10TB we ask you to contact us directly so we can understand your needs and scale our service accurately. (more…)

UCL Data Safe Haven should be used to store personal and sensitive data. Information and guidance is available.

Ethical and legal issues should always be considered when storing and preserving your research data.

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Some research funders such as the EPSRC require you to make openly available (where appropriate) datasets supporting your pending publications.

UCL Discovery is a repository that can be used to make publicly accessible such small datasets underpinning your publications. It is free of charge for UCL researchers.

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Two official documents are here to help UCL researchers and students understand their responsibilities regarding the preservation (or “archiving”) of the data that they produce. Check the definition of research data if you are not sure what is meant by it.

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