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Research Data Management

Research data management (RDM)

Research data management (RDM) means description, organization, storage, preservation, sharing, and publishing of data collected and used in a research project. Effective and responsible RDM is an integral part and essential requirement of good scientific practices and research skills.

A RDM principle is that research data are as closed as necessary and as open as possible. 

Follow the data management flowcharts or stages 

outlined in Data management processes at Hanken in this LibGuide.

These flowcharts and stages with different instructions and templates give practical guidance on how to complete your various RDM tasks step by step throughout your data life cycle.​ 

Departments and principal investigators ought to familiarize students and research staff with good data management practices. See Instructions for supervisors.

   Data management flow

What are research data and why manage your data?

Research data can be any material a research project uses and produces as the basis for research findings, in either physical or digital form. Digital datasets generated, processed, and used in scientific research can be:

  • data collected by various methods (such as surveys, interviews, video recordings, images),
  • data produced during the research (such as analysis results),
  • research sources reused (such as open archived data, commercial databases),
  • source code and software, and
  • information describing the context, contents and structure of the data (readme files and metadata).

Benefits of managing research data include:

  • Well-managed and documented data make it easier to write research results for publications,
  • 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 and promoting new discoveries,
  • Meeting funders' requirements and journal data policies,
  • Comply with data protection legislation and agree upon data ownership and rights,
  • Archiving and preserving your data in the long term,
  • Saving time and resources, and
  • Supporting open science.

Help and support

Contact dataethics@hanken.fi if you have any questions on ethical and legal matters concerning data security, data protection, and IPR issues, Data management plan (DMP), data storage, backup, and transfers, metadata creation, data archival and preservation.

Trainings are offered as part of studies and staff training. More information, see Courses and workshops.

Additional resources