The Brandeis Library offers resources and services to assist researchers in all stages of the data management process: from planning ahead and submitting grant proposals; to storing and securing data during active research; to long-term preservation to satisfy patent or funding requirements, or future use in-lab for comparison of experiment results; to sharing and publishing data for reuse by other researchers. Library staff are available for workshops on a variety of software and programming languages, and one-on-one consultations will help you find, manage, analyze, and visualize the data you use in your research.
Brandeis researchers across disciplines are performing incredible and world-changing research, producing unique data every day. Funding agencies, publishers, and research communities are increasingly interested in seeing these data preserved and shared alongside more traditional publication.
Brandeis Library and ITS offer resources and services to assist researchers in all stages of the data management process: from planning ahead and submitting grant proposals; to storing and securing data during active research; to long-term preservation to satisfy patent or funding requirements, or future use in-lab for comparison of experiment results; to sharing and publishing data for reuse by other researchers.
Figure: Data Management Life Cycle
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Michigan State University Libraries. © MSU Board of Trustees
For submitting grant proposals, The Data Management Planning Tool (DMPTool) provides funder-based templates for creating a data management plan. Use it on your own, or contact your Subject Liaison to consult on specifics.
If your data fall under HIPAA regulations or other information protected by law, please consult ITS Information Security for more information. For highly-sensitive information, please email ITS Security to set up your research computers and file storage system.
We can work with you one-on-one to provide guidance on file naming strategies or other practices that ensure the organization and integrity of your data. Having these in place before research begins saves time and effort. Consult your Subject Liaison.
Contact your Subject Liaison to assist you in locating datasets or other resources needed to begin your research.
Subject Liaisons are happy to assist in the selection of Electronic Lab Notebooks or consult on other data collection and management tools.
Many data formats have certain file types that are better for long-term use of the data, and others that are less stable. Often these fall into open vs. proprietary file types. Subject Liaisons are happy to work with you to choose stable file types for the longevity of your data.
Campus research storage shares are available in multi-TB size. Please use this form to submit a request.
Brandeis also offers institutional accounts to Box, a secure cloud storage solution.
Some departments have internal technology coordinators who are available to consult on external hard drive and private file server selection, or other on-site storage solutions.
For all Brandeis storage solutions, levels of access can be set to restrict sensitive files to only the researchers with appropriate permissions. Please consult the Technology Help Desk.
We offer workshops on data analysis and management, such as Stata, SPSS, R, GIS mapping, and more.
The High Performance Computing Cluster is available to researchers with big data or big analysis needs. Please read the usage best practices in the Knowledge Base.
Open Access, author’s rights, Brandeis Scholarworks, and more topics are covered in Publishing Support. If the information available does not answer all of your questions, please don’t hesitate to contact your Subject Liaison.
Librarians can assist you in identifying an appropriate online data repository for your research, and assist in applying appropriate metadata to your dataset to make it more widely useable by other researchers. Please contact your Subject Liaison.
Your Subject Liaison can also assist in obtaining Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) for datasets posted online. DOIs make your research more discoverable, stable and citable.
If your data are stored in proprietary, outdated, or compressed formats, there is risk that your data will not be readable in the future. Librarians can assist you in identifying archival formats for your data files. Please consult your Subject Liaison. The Technology Help Desk is available to troubleshoot if you run into issues during conversion.
Your Subject Liaison can work with you to determine how long you are required to keep your data after your research has concluded. We also have a University Records Manager who can be consulted in tricky situations
Your Subject Liaison can work with you to create preservation solutions for data post-research.