Making the Case for Research Data Management

This briefing paper aims to help managers in research institutions build support for developing new services for research data management. It also gives a brief snapshot of the JISC-led programmes on Managing Research Data and Shared Services and the Cloud.

Higher Education research managers need to coordinate an ever-broader range of research outputs and outcomes. In this briefing we show how institutions have taken a lead in establishing research data policies and services that will support them. We show how these are giving measurable improvements in research capability, and in the institutions’ ability to respond to policy-makers and regulators. Institutions require coherent frameworks to establish the organisation, resources and technology capable of generating these benefits. This in itself presents challenges in achieving coherent change across the many disparate components within an institution. The pressure to do so with fewer resources means that JISC-led initiatives like the Managing Research Data programme and the Shared Services and the Cloud Programme come at an opportune time.

The prospects for sharing resources to gain efficiencies and more effective collaboration are extending beyond established areas such as IT Services, Library and Research Support. Just as academics are producing digital research assets in greater volume and variety, data management services are joining computation as resources that can be pooled more effectively. Benefits may also be found by considering other parts of the research cycle that can be served through repository services already established to manage research articles.

Tools, services and standards are emerging to help researchers manage their research assets, and to make more widely available the evidence including raw and processed data that underpins their research articles. Effective management is providing institutions with new ways to find synergies across research groups, producing new knowledge by engaging a broader range of stakeholders, and enabling wider reuse of data in teaching and learning, commercial exploitation and policy development.