Data Management
The amount of research data is increasing explosively and solutions to store, share, retrieve and reuse the information are important for both institutions and for developing new research. Here, you can read more about the strategies to handling data, and find practical examples of good data handling.
Data management is about rules and procedures for managing data.
It is necessary to ensure the quality of research data to avoid cheating or plagiarism, while ensuring the reusability of research so that new knowledge can build on existing knowledge. In the longer term, the intention is to seamlessly share data across borders and disciplines to leverage known data for new research. The purpose of good data management is thus to ensure that data is sufficiently well managed in the present and prepared for long-term preservation and use.
To achieve this vision, the starting point is FAIR data, where data meets the principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability.
DeiC acts as the advisory and coordinating body in the data management work, which is based on a strategy for national collaboration on digital research infrastructure, prepared by the Danish universities and the Ministry of Higher Education and Science (UFM). All eight universities are involved in the work to implement the strategy's goals.
Collaborations and projects
Denmark's research cannot develop its full potential if we do not look beyond our own work and national borders. Therefore, DeiC participates in various national and international forums, projects and organizations to bring technical, political and international knowledge home.
FAIR Data
Denmark is working towards publicly funded research data being FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable), and that the FAIR principles are used in research data management. Through the Danish e-Infrastructure Consortium (DeiC), the Ministry of Higher Education and Science has therefore developed a national strategy for data management based on the FAIR principles (the FAIR strategy), which was published in 2021. The goal is for publicly funded research data to be as open as possible, but as closed as necessary.
The first step in (re)using data is finding it. Metadata and data should be easy to find for both humans and computers.
Once the user has found the desired data, it must be clear how it can be accessed, possibly with authentication and authorization requirements.
Data must be able to integrate with other data and interoperate with applications or workflows for analysis, storage and processing.
To optimize the reuse of data, metadata and data must be well described so they can be reproduced or combined in different contexts.
DOIs make research data easy to find and cite. DeiC runs the DataCite Consortium, the Danish link to the international DOI issuer.
DeiC DMP helps researchers write data management plans that describe the planned handling of research data.
Contact us
If you need further information about data management, you are welcome to contact us. You can find relevant contact details on the individual subpages.
Contact Head of Data Management Anne Sofie Fink Kjeldgaard for general questions about data management in DeiC.