The Open Research and Rights team in Library Services, provides support for research data management to staff and students. The Research Data Manager can advise on how to prepare a data management plan when applying for research grants, and how to comply with funder requirements, and the University's research data management policy in the Research Integrity Code.
If you receive public funding for your research, you are required to make your research data freely accessible and discoverable online as far as possible. There are exceptions for personal or confidential data, governed by data protection legislation. However, even where data is confidential, funders require that information on how to access the data and on what terms, are made public on related publications and outputs.
Additionally, if you receive funding from the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), it has a mandate in place requiring that research data is routinely made freely accessible and discoverable online for all active grants by 1 May 2015. Where no exceptions apply, EPSRC data must be published online.
For all data, public or not, RCUK funded researchers should record the following in the University's research data archive, Brunel Figshare.
- a basic description of the data, including keywords for metadata to aid discoverability
- your research grant code
- data location details: eg a URL or DOI for publicly available data; or details of format, where and how it is stored and a data contact for embargoed data
- for embargoed data, justification for the embargo and term of protection (eg until publication, patents granted)
This information will be used to manage external data access requests appropriately and to create and maintain a public registry of research data arising from or related to Brunel research. You can use this to demonstrate compliance with funder and University open data requirements.
Contact the Research Data Manager at researchdata@brunel.ac.uk and see links for further information on University and funder research data management policies and general issues.
