Data Life Cycle

Data management involves having a comprehensive plan (a.k.a. DMP) that addresses each stage of the research data lifecycle.

The data lifecycle begins with data management planning!

When creating your data management plan, consider these key components:

  • Collection - methods and tools
  • Processing - QA/QC, file formats, standards
  • Analysis - software, models, etc
  • Preservation - safety, integrity, accessibility, persistent identifiers
  • Sharing - policies, licensing, repository
  • Reuse - Metadata, provenance

Comments

The ELIXIR Europe Data Lifecycle graphic on the right1 has clickable segments to learn more about each stage. The ESIP DMP resource covers the same topics, but has been tailored to ESIP-relevant data management resources.

Research Data Lifecycle Diagram Share Reuse Preserve Analyse Process Plan Collect

Footnotes

  1. The diagram and links are from ELIXIR Europe, which built a Research Data Management toolkit (RDMkit) that describes best practices and guidelines for managing data and making it FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). Details available at: RDMkit: The ELIXIR Research Data Management toolkit for Life Sciences↩︎