
A Free Online Course for Research Data Management for PhD Students
Accidentally run into this great online tutorial named Mantra. The Research Data MANTRA is a course designed for PhD students and others who are planning a research project using digital data. The course is online at: http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/ and it was developed at EDINA and Data Library, University of Edinburgh, by a team of data librarians and an e-learning specialist, funded by the JISC Managing Research Data Programme (2010-11).
The course content consists of an online module and four software modules. The online module is organized in eight learning units as:
1. Research data explained: introduces the learner to the concept of research data, what constitutes research data, and how it differs from other types of information.
2. Data management plans: focuses on the concept of data management and how to create a data management plan.
3. Organising data: introduces the learner to the concept of research data organisation or housekeeping, explains why it is important, and what constitutes good data file management.
4. File formats and transformation: is about data file formatting, compression, normalisation, and other kinds of data transformation, and why such skills are useful in a research context.
5. Documentation and metadata: focuses on the importance of documenting data during a research project and purposes of metadata.
6. Storage and security: raises awareness about the issues involved in storing, securing and backing up your research data.
7. Data protection, rights and access (in development).
8. Preservation, sharing and licensing (in development).
The MANTRA training course is a great resource and if you know of any other similar online course, please let me know.