Research Data Management: Simple Ways to Make your Research Life Easier

Research Data Management Simple Ways to Make your Research Life Easier Tom Morrell BE/Bi 103 October 15, 2025 https://doi.org/10.5281/17360296 Current Research Data Practices Akers, K. G. & Doty, J. Disciplinary differences in faculty research data management practices and perspectives. Int. J. Digit. Curation 8, 5–26 (2013). doi: 10.2218/ijdc.v8i2.263 (Emory) Shen, Y. Strategic Planning for a Data-Driven, Shared-Access Research Enterprise: Virginia Tech Research Data Assessment and Landscape Study. Coll. Res. Libr. 77, 500–519 (2016). doi: 10.5860/crl.77.4.500 Most researchers store data on local computer hard drives Researchers report that finding data is their biggest challenge How Reusable is Research Data Today? •Morphological characteristics of plants and animals •516 publications using a specific analysis technique between 1991 and 2011 •25% of emails didn’t work •38% didn’t respond to email •13% didn’t have data •4% didn’t want to share •Received 19% of data •Availability decreased with time Vines, T. H. et al. The availability of research data declines rapidly with article age. Curr. Biol. 24, 94–97 (2014). doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.11.014 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 0 5 10 15 20 25 Percentage of Publications Where Data Exists Age of Paper (Years) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 0 5 10 15 20 25 Data Quality Andrew, R. L. et al. Assessing the reproducibility of discriminant function analyses. PeerJ (2015). doi:10.7717/peerj.1137 On Average, 13% of Papers Had Usable Data Why is it better to have data available? Berman, H. M., Kleywegt, G. J., Nakamura, H. & Markley, J. L. The Protein Data Bank archive as an open data resource. J. Comput. Aided. Mol. Des. 1009–1014 (2014). doi:10.1007/s10822-014-9770-y Abramson, J, et. Al. Accurate Structure Prediction of Biomolecular Interactions with AlphaFold 3. Nature 2024, 630 (8016), 493–500. 10.1038/s41586-024-07487-w. www.rcsb.org Why is it better to have data available? Journals require data availability: Commitment Statement in the Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences for depositing and sharing data https://copdess.org/enabling-fair-data-project/commitment-statement-in-the-earth-space-and-environmental-sciences/ Stall, S. et. al. Make scientific data FAIR Nature. 570, 27-29 (2019). doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-01720-7 Why is it better to have data available? “Scientific data underlying peerreviewed scholarly publications resulting from federally funded research should be made freely available and publicly accessible by default at the time of publication.” 2022 OSTP Memo https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-Access-Memo.pdf •Expected Data •Data Formats and Metadata •Access to Data •Data Archiving Data Management Plans One Example: Started with proposal submitted Jan 25 2023 “NIH expects that in drafting Plans, researchers will maximize the appropriate sharing of scientific data” “NIH Encourages the use of established repositories” “Shared scientific data should be made accessible as soon as possible” (at publication or by the end of grant) https://grants.nih.gov/policy-and-compliance/policy-topics/sharing-policies#after https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-21-013.html Simple Solutions •Choose a file naming/organization scheme •Save reasonable files •Use reliable storage •Plan for sharing Check out the Research Data Management Handbook at: https://caltechlibrary.github.io/RDMworkbook/ Local vs Cloud Storage •RAID array can protect against data loss •Reasonably low cost (4 TB-$425; 112 TB-$3400) •Need to plan space requirements •Need to manage •Defined or flexible storage •Vendor Managed •Continuous cost •Limited by bandwidth •Dependent on vendor Local Storage Cloud Storage Disaster Recovery •What Happens in a Disaster? •Use 2 mirrored NAS units in 2 locations •Mirror local storage to cloud storage (AWS Glacier Deep Archive) Earthquake damage a Cal State Northridge, 1994 by Stickpen, CC0 License Data Sharing •FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reusability) •Subject Repositories •General Repositories •Institutional Repositories Wilkinson, M. D. et al. The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Sci. Data 3:160018 doi: 10.1038/sdata.2016.18 (2016) Subject Repositories •Protein Data Bank •GenBank •Wormbase •Pangaea •Long Term Ecological Research Data Portal •Good listing: journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability •Thousands more: www.re3data.org General Repositories •Zenodo (CERN-Free) •Dryad (Nonprofit-$120 per submission + Space) •Figshare (20GB Max) •Mendeley Data (Elsevier-Free) •Dataverse (Harvard-Free) CaltechDATA •Available at data.caltech.edu •Easy to describe and upload files •All records get a DOI (permanent, registered link) •500 GB free uploads (soon to be 1 TB) •Integration with GitHub •API for accessing data •Library takes care of preserving and maintaining access to files Discoverability •CaltechDATA site search •DOIs appear in DataCite search •Broad discoverability Demo Data Files https://doi.org/10.22002/D1.224 https://doi.org/10.22002/D1.227 https://doi.org/10.22002/D1.228 https://doi.org/10.22002/D1.229 https://rpgroup-pboc.github.io/mwc_induction https://doi.org/10.22002/D1.299 Paper Website on GitHub https://doi.org/10.1101/111013 Use Cases Use Case - TCCON Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) 29 Data Collection Sites Around the World Data files Data Curation and Processing Processed Data https://tccon-wiki.caltech.edu/Sites/Park_Falls http://tccondata.org/