Before You Start

Many funders require a data management plan (DMP) as part of the grant application process. A good DMP demonstrates how you will create and share FAIR data. It also demonstrates how your project will comply with your funder’s data policy.

St George’s-specific templates for writing your DMP are available on DMPOnline. There is guidance  and a series of  user tutorials available on how to use DMPOnline, but if you get into difficulty contact the Research Data Management Service and we will be happy to help you.

Alternatively, you can use the Data Curation Centre’s checklist for a data management plan to help you to write a DMP.

If you anticipate you’d need bioinformatics support, statistical input or specialist research systems for your project it is best to identify these at the start so that we can cost them into the grant. Refer to our during your project page for more information.  

If you will be developing any intellectual property (IP) as part of your project, particularly any potentially commercialisable outputs, visit the JRES Enterprise pages for relevant guidance as IP will affect whether or not you are able to share your data.

You are encouraged to share a draft of your DMP with the Research Data Management Service for feedback. You can also contact the RDM Service to book a slot to chat about your DMP. Just send us an email.

Many funders allow researchers to cost data management into their grant application. The RDM Service and the JRES work together with project teams to identify RDM-related costs at the application stage.

The UK Data Service has produced an activity-based data management costing tool that might help you to identify some data management costs on your project.

There are a number of policies that will impact data management on your project.

Most external funding bodies expect research data and metadata to be made openly available at the end of your project with as few restrictions as possible. Many also expect research data to be appropriately preserved for the long term. The University of Cambridge maintains a list of major UK funders’ data management policies for reference.

St George’s, University of London researchers are also obliged to follow St George’s research data management policy.

If you will be managing sensitive data, you may wish to make your data available on a controlled-access basis. St George’s controlled data access SOP outlines our institutional procedures for providing controlled access to St George’s research data.

Much of St George’s data can be classified as sensitive data. If this reflects the data you will be handling, and especially if you will be collecting and storing personal data, visit the information governance pages to find policies and SOPs that will be relevant to your research.

Project teams are responsible for ensuring that they have the required ethical and governance approvals to proceed with their research. Visit the JRES governance pages for more information.

Research and public sector data are increasingly becoming easier to find, access, use and cite. The re3data registry is a good place to start looking for existing datasets. This is a global registry of research data repositories covering a range of disciplines and institutions.

The Health Data Research Innovation Gateway has a UK focus and facilitates search, discovery and access to datasets, tools and other resources.

Vivli is a global data sharing platform for clinical research data, with a focus on sharing individual participant level data from clinical trials.

The UK Data Service manages the UK's largest collection of economic, social and population data for research.

The UK Biobank is a large-scale biomedical database and research resource, containing in-depth genetic and health information from half a million UK participants.

There are many other interdisciplinary, discipline-specific and institutional repositories to explore. If you are just starting a project and would like help to find existing data in your research area, the RDM Service may be able to assist you. Contact us via email.

Contact the RDM Service via email to book a slot for bespoke RDM clinics for you and your research team.

There are also a number of online training resources available to help you to build your competence with RDM in our increasingly data-intensive and open research environment. Foster Open Science provides researchers with training in open science. There are modules in health, medicine, biosciences and bioinformatics. The Managing and sharing research data module provides a good starting point for research data management.

The Jisc RDM toolkit lists a range of RDM resources available on the web and guides researchers to the most relevant resources in their field.