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Research Data Management (RDM) refers to the organisation, storage and preservation of your research data throughout the lifecycle of your project.

There are many potential benefits of good research data management for you, your institution, collaborators and others researchers:  

• Keep research safe, secure and lawful
• Stay organised and efficient 
• Increase research validity and integrity
• Increase research visibility and citations
• Enable collaboration and data reuse

Leeds Beckett has an Open Research Policy which applies to all staff and postgraduate research students registering for study from 1st October 2020 onwards. To comply with this policy, Principal Investigators (the leader) of a new research project must include a research data management plan that explicitly addresses data capture, management, integrity, confidentiality, retention, deletion, sharing and publication, as laid out in the template below. ​

Your Data Management Plan (DMP) describes what you will collect and how you will organise, analyse, preserve and share your data, taking into account the whole lifecycle of your data. Completing it helps ensure you meet funder requirements (where applicable) and you should complete it as early as possible during the research project. 

If your research project is externally funded by a research council or charitable organisation, check if they have their own DMP. Otherwise, you should download and use the Leeds Beckett University DMP.

All research projects need to show how data are managed to receive ethical approval. This will normally be through a Data Management Plan.

• All participants in research projects normally have to give their informed consent (with any exceptions in line with the Research Ethics Policy and Procedures).
• All data in the life of a project need to be stored securely, accessible only through password-protected files. The Data Management Plan needs to identify processes for secure archiving and destruction.
• If data are to be made openly accessible, then informed consent forms and information sheets need to include this use. Where data will be made openly accessible, the data must be anonymised, and all participants must understand how that takes place so that they are comfortable taking part in the research.
• Not all data from every research project needs to be made openly accessible as not all data are suitable for anonymisation and publishing openly. However, the University believes there is a strong ethical case to move anonymised data into openly accessible repositories.

Leeds Beckett University has a new Open Research Policy, which sets out our commitment to making the products of our research (both outputs and research data) publicly available.

The UK Data Service has useful guidance on managing your research data throughout its lifecycle, including planning, sharing, data ethics, copyright and storage.