Benefits of Research Data Management
Research Data Management has many benefits researches and the scientific community at large, such as ensuring data integrity, saving time, meeting research agencies requirements and many more. Below is a discussion of the many benefits of Research Data Management.
Data Integrity
Managing research data produced in a research project ensures research integrity. Research Data Management ensures that research data is accurate and valid. Managing and documenting research data increases the transparency and accountability of a research project. It makes it possible for other researchers to user your research data in their future projects.
Save time
Research is time consuming. Therefore, when researchers plan before hand, how they plan on collecting, organizing, storing, analyzing and preserving data, this saves them time.
Efficiency
Using good Research Data Management practices means that research data will be well organised when research data is well organised, it is easier to access, use and analyse. Moreover, well managed research data assist researchers to keep abreast of the progress of their research.
Meeting funding agencies requirement
Funding agencies are taking an increasing interest in what happens to research data during and after a research project. As a result more and more funding agencies require researchers to submit a research management plan. A research management plan is a document which provides a detailed account of how data will be dealt with during its lifecycle.
Promotes news discoveries
Sharing researcher data with other researchers can lead to new and innovative use of the research data. New research findings can be built from existing researcher data, when it is available in the public domain for reuse. Moreover, sharing research data minimises the duplication of research. Moreover, publicly shared research data can help researchers with little or no funding to carry out their research project using existing research data.
Safety and security
Storing data safely and securely in appropriate and reliable data storage facilities decreases possibilities of unexpected loss of data. It is also wise to back up research data in more than one storage facility in case of computer crashes or hardware failure. Research data is usually stored in data repositories.
Data Repositories
Data repositories help researchers to store and preserve their data for use by them later and or by other researchers. Data repositories assist in citing data, by attaching metadata to the research data. Metadata is data about other data which with the discovery of data.
Preservation
Depositing research data into data repositories or other safe storage facilities helps in keeping data safe for longer time periods. This ensures that the research data is available for long term use, even after the project is completed.
Increased Research Impact
When researchers make their research data publicly available for sharing and reuse their increase the impact of their research. Sharing research data publicly makes the research more discoverable to other researchers and this increases the relevancy of the research. The more times other researchers cite another researcher’s research data, the more visible and credible the researcher becomes.
Support for Open Access
When researchers make their researcher data publicly available for discovery and reuse by other researchers under the Open Data Common or creative commons, they are showing support for Open Access.