John Murtagh, UEL

Data Management forGeoinformatics

A short course on good data management for taught postgraduate students in geoinformatics and related data sciences.

John Murtagh, UEL

Data Sharing

Researchers are being encouraged to share the data that is created in the process of their research, and in particular data that is central to the understanding and validation of their publications.

Several developments in infrastructure are emerging that will enable the sharing of curated data, including data repositories specialised to store data, and data journals which have a focus on disseminating data that underlies research.

The drivers that are motivating these developments come from…

Funders

Institutions

Publishers

Researchers

http://www.scitechnol.com/2327-4581/2327-4581-1-e101.pdf

Why Share?

Reuse your own data• In short more than one and the more basic and common the better, e.g. CSV

raw text is better than E-Prime E-DataAid files• Keep the original data along with any versions translated into new emerging

formats, e.g. MS Word 2 -> Word 4 -> Word 6 going forward...• Update to new storage media as it becomes available, Floppy disk -> CDR ->

DVDR… plus keep the originals• Bear in mind companies go bust and take their software and file formats with

them, e.g. WordStar, WordPerfect, Lotus 123… plus companies are taken over and change direction IBM SPSS!

• Be sure to describe your data properly using metadata (data about data) so you or someone else can understand it!

• You can fall under the proverbial bus and so can all your data so describe it fully• Printed copies aren’t all bad but remember these can go in the bin if space is

short

Slide from Data Management Planning and Storage for Psychology (DMSPpsych)The University of Sheffield

Other sessions as part of Data Management in Geoinformatics:

•Data Collection•Data Integration•Data Management•Data Sharing

Data Management for Geoinformatics by John Murtagh as part of the Jisc funded project TraD (University of East London is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike Licence

Images• Funder by Krista Kennedy (CC BY-NC-SA)• The University of East London by Steve Cadman (CC BY-NC-SA)• Booksellers & Publishers by Jeremy Brooks (CC BY-NC)• Research Team by Dean Shareski (CC BY-NC)