Introduction to Data Management Practices

Course name: Introduction to Data Management Practices
Contact: edu.intro-dm@nbis.se

This course will introduce important aspects of Research Data Management through a series of lectures and hands-on computer exercises. The course is intended for researchers that want to take the first steps towards a more systematic and reproducible approach to analysing and managing research data.

 

Course content


Topics covered will include:

  • Open Science and FAIR in practice
  • Organising data, files and folders in research projects
  • Describing data with metadata
  • Publishing data to public data repositories
  • Cleaning tabular data and metadata with OpenRefine
  • Writing basic recipes for data analysis and visualisation with R
  • Versioning data, documents and scripts
  • Writing Data Management Plans

 

Learning outcomes


At the end of the course, students well be able to:

  • Describe some reasons for the principles of Open Science and FAIR
  • Organise their project files and metadata in a structured way
  • Find, and select, relevant metadata standards for their research project
  • Find suitable public repositories for their data, and have an understanding of how to do submit them
  • Clean up existing tabular data
  • Perform basic version control of files, and have means to learn more advanced skills
  • Perform basic data analysis and visualisations in R, and have means to learn more advanced skills
  • Have an understanding of the benefits of DMPs, and what a DMP should contain

 

Application instructions


National course open for PhD students, postdocs, researchers and other employees within all Swedish universities. The course is geared towards life scientists wanting to take the first steps towards a more systematic and reproducible approach to analysing and managing research data.

Entry requirements

No previous programming experience is required, but you are required to bring your own laptop with the required software pre-installed. Installation instructions will be provided before the course starts.

Fee

We charge a fee for onsite course occasions,  to be paid by invoice to NBIS. This includes lunches, coffee and snacks. Please note that NBIS cannot invoice individuals.

Registration

See Upcoming courses below.

 

Upcoming courses

  • 19-21 November, 2024, Uppsala
  • preliminary, April 2025 

Previous courses


Teaching materials


The course content is available as Carpentry style modules on Github.

Links to course modules and repositories
Module site Repository
Open Science and FAIR Links to an external site. https://github.com/NBISweden/module-open-science-dm-practices Links to an external site.
Data organisation practices Links to an external site. https://github.com/NBISweden/module-organising-data-dm-practices Links to an external site.
Metadata Links to an external site. https://github.com/NBISweden/module-metadata-dm-practices Links to an external site.
Data publication Links to an external site. https://github.com/NBISweden/module-data-publication-dm-practices Links to an external site.
Cleaning tabular data with OpenRefine Links to an external site. https://github.com/NBISweden/module-openrefine-dm-practices Links to an external site.
Introduction to scripted analysis with R Links to an external site. https://github.com/NBISweden/module-r-intro-dm-practices Links to an external site.
Versioning of Data and Code using Git Links to an external site. https://github.com/NBISweden/module-versioning-dm-practices Links to an external site.
Data Management Plans Links to an external site. https://github.com/NBISweden/module-dmp-dm-practices Links to an external site.