The University Libraries offers support for university faculty, students, and staff across all disciplines in the management of research data. The Research Data Services team partners across campus to connect researchers with the appropriate tools, resources, and expertise for dealing with data at every stage, from planning, through dissemination and archiving.
Research Data Services can provide in-depth guidance on preparing your Data Management Plan (DMP), organizing and curating data, and disseminating for replication and ensuring funding agency and publisher requirements. Learn more about the DMPTool, Research Data Services, or contact us: UL-RDS@txstate.edu.
Sharing your research data and software code is an open science best practice and required by many research funding agencies. The Research Data Services team provides advice about disseminating research data, ensuring that it is discoverable, accessible and reusable so that your work is replicable and all products of your research are citable. The University Libraries Research Data Curation Specialist can help you find the appropriate places to share your data openly, and help identify strategies for protecting sensitive information.
Consider depositing your data in the Texas State University Dataverse Repository. The TXST Dataverse Repository is hosted through the Texas Digital Library on the Dataverse platform developed and used as part of the Harvard University IQSS Dataverse Project.
The Data Management Plan (DMP) DMPTool is a resource that offers guides and templates for researchers in preparing their data management plans for specific funding agencies, or for any collection of research data. The DMPTool guides researchers in planning each phase of their project including specifying data types, ownership, description, preservation and sharing. The tool prompts you with guidelines and questions specific to your funding agency, which will expedite drafting of plans.
The University Libraries Data Curation Specialist can help you navigate using the DMPTool and assist you with boilerplate text and crafting your data management plan.
A File Naming Convention (FNC) is a framework for naming your files in a way that describes what they contain and how they relate to other files.
It is essential to establish a FNC before you being collecting data to prevent against a backlog of unorganized files that could lead to misplaced or lost data. Deciding on a file naming convention within a group is helpful for effective communication and consistency in your work. Consider the important elements of your research in order to establish meaningful file names (data of creation, version of file, project title or acronym, etc.).
Examples of elements to include in establishing your File Naming Convention: