Skip to Main Content

Residents' Subject Guide: Data Management

Guide for Residents that includes article databases, tutorials, e-Books, calculators, quick reference guides and LSHSL Quick Links

What is DMP?

Many federal agencies, including NIH and NSF, now require a DMP (data management plan) for grant applications. The essential elements of a DMP include a description of the data, metadata, a data storage and sharing plan, preservation and associated legal and ethical issues. This guide is intended to help you learn some basics about DMP and so that you can create one of your own.

Data Mgmt 101

The first step in data management is to ask this crucial question: What data will enable me to answer the question I am asking?

For there, you create a data management plan (DMP). Start by jotting down answers to the following questions:

What is the format of the data? How am I going to collect it? How do I control the quality? What is the budget/timeline? How do I ensure the data security? What is Howard's policy? What metadata will I use?

The following resources provide theoretical background and practical tools in data management.

DMP Tools by California Digital Library

University of Minnesota Data Center

DataCite

Databib

DataOne

ICPSR

Major Agency Requirements

How to Find Data

How to Cite Data

Cite the data as you would cite a book or an article. Here are some key components:
  • Author/Principal Investigator/Data Creator
  • Release Date/Year of Publication
  • Title of Dataset
  • Version/Edition Number
  • Format of the Data
  • 3rd Party Data Producer/Repository – When accessed via a third party
  • The location that holds the dataset
  • Locator or Identifier (such as Digital Object Identifiers (DOI), Handles, Archival Resource Key (ARK), etc.)
  • Accessed Date and Time
  • Publication Place – City, State and Country of the data distributor
  • Data within a Larger Work – Refers to the use of data in a compilation or a data supplement (such as published in a peer-reviewed paper)

Howard Resources

If you need assistance with statistical analysis, please contact:

John Kwagyan, Ph.D.
Director, Biostatics Epidemiology & Research Design
GHUCCTS
jkwagyan@Howard.edu
 
Victor Apprey, Ph.D.
Computational Systems Analyst
National Human Genome Center
vapprey@Howard.edu

REDCap

REDCap is a mature, secure web application for building and managing online surveys and databases. Howard is a REDCap member institute.

If you're interested in learning more, please contact:
Nana Osafo
Information Systems Director
Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) Program
College of Medicine, Room 326

nosafo@howard.edd; 202-806-3953

(Howard REDCap)

Image Map