Research Data Management: Introduction

Research data management (RDM) means organization, description, storage, preservation, and sharing of data collected and used in a research project. This guide is intended to give an overview of the practices and process of managing your research data.

RDM is an integral part of good research practices. Hanken students and researchers are responsible for complying with good data management practices that include Hanken's ethical research guidelines on the management and sharing of research data, data security and data protection in accordance with legislation and research integrity. Departments and principal investigators ought to familiarize students and research staff with good data management practices. See Instructions for supervisors.

Follow the stages and checklist outlined in Data management process at Hanken. These concrete stages with descriptions, as well as must-dos, in each stage offer students and researchers, respectively, comprehensive and thorough guides that you can trace the whole data management process easily, clearly, and closely.

E-forms and templates you (may) need can be found:

• Record of data processing activities for students e-form.
• Record of data processing activities for researchers (template_for_record_of_data_processing_activities_ka.xlsx).
• Consent message template for collecting personal data.
• Ethical review request e-form.

- Fairdata.fi.

- Data management guidelines by Finnish Social Science Data Archive (FSD).

- Research data management by the University of Helsinki.

- Hantering av forskningsdata by Tritonia.

- Research Data Management Training MANTRA by the University of Edinburgh.

- Open data in Openscience.fi.

- The Research Data Alliance.

- The Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman. 

- Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK).

- General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union (GDPR).

Benefits of managing research data include:

• Making it easier to find, understand, cite, and reuse your data to increase the impact of your research.
• Enabling the sharing of data within and across disciplines, facilitating collaboration.
• Promoting new discoveries.
• Meeting funder requirements.
• Complying with journal data policies.
• Ensuring data integrity.
• Archiving and preserving your data in the long term.
• Saving time and resources.
• Supporting open science.
• Well-managed and documented data make it easier to write up research results for publication.

Help and support for research data management is a network of staff from Hanken's Data Protection Officer, the library, and IT Services. Questions about data management, ethical and legal matters concerning data security, data protection and IPR issues, assistance with data management plans, data storage, and data sharing and preservation, please contact Hanken's Data Protection Officer dpo@hanken.fi or openresearch@hanken.fi.

We also provide training in creating data management plans and in data management and data protection throughout your research lifecycle. Training is offered both as part of studies and as staff training. More information, see Courses and workshops.