Data Management for Wits: RDM for grant funded projects

Unfortunately it does mean a bit of extra work.But we are here to help you.

Support Services

The Research Office offers various workshops on applying for grants and publishing as does the faculty research committees. The Library also offers workshops on authors’ rights, scholarly communication, and advice on publishing, as well as an individualized service to researchers seeking appropriate journals. Subject librarians can help a researcher compile a list of possible journals to publish in, based on impact factors, submission times, DHET accreditation and suitability. The Library can also create reports on groups of journals for research groups. Apart from this individualized support, we provide information via our Library website and LibGuides.Finally, see we offer help in organizing the data and we will publish it safely, securely and ethically. We also advise on software and we source open software.The most important thing is for a researcher or student to remember data management takes time, money, thought and organization so you need to have it on research schedules, think about staffing needs and your budgets.

Remember when you are filling in the DMPonline that Dropbox is not a trustworthy repository. Even Wits' student G-drive is expected to be used for STORAGE, not backup and certainly not for long-term preservation. That data needs to be moved at the end of the project so in the Data Management Plan you need to state which repository. Wits Library is now storing and organizing access to data in a sister digital library to the institutional repository. This is a pilot project so we are accepting any kind of data deposited in any kind of way in 2018.

 However mostly we have organized solutions for

1. Data which is attached to a research article that is or will be published in the repository. This means, in general, most articles that are published by Wits staff and students that are submitted to the Welcome to the WITS Research Output Collection System as part of the reporting process  to Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in order to collect the subsidy .
2. Data which is required to be deposited because a journal wants to see the data in reviewing an article for publication.
3. Data are given to Wits for historical preservation at the end of research projects.

Each data set is unique and we treat it that way. Every data set as its own rules for who may see it( access ), or reuse it. We follow the data management plan and the ethical clearance that has been given to it.However, in general, we do not publish raw datasets unless it clear that they are most usefully presented that way. The library will create a metadata container for the data so that it has a Digital Object Identifier, and enough description so that people can find it. We generally ask for a set of data documents. Then we arrange for levels of access to the public.

What does data supporting the paper mean

Librarians immediately excited tried to summaries and harmonies all the policies.We failed, repeated it and failed again. So we have no real idea but we have listed.

1. The exact process to replicate results by a colleague or lab matching your own expertise and equipment. 
2. All your data and all your other data as well.
3. Your data and you're known how and your lab processes.
4. Or it's that excel spreadsheet.
5. Or Proof you did this, or data that would not fit in the table or data that is only interesting to about  5 people or data that you worked really hard on and is not interesting at all but you want to do SOMETHING with it.