Best Practices for Managing Data in your Research

TIFU (Today I F'ed Up) by losing a ton of data for my research - Have you ever seen a description like this on Reddit? Are your desktop and downloads folders a jumble of files named Data-finalFINAL-USETHISONE? Is all of your lab's data stored on a single drive located conveniently under a sprinkler system? Join research data management services and learn how investing a small amount of time in organizing your data now can save you a lot of time and prevent future headaches. In this introductory workshop, learn about research data management best practices. We will go over best practices for data planning, storage, organization, preservation, and sharing.

By the end of the session, participants will be empowered to:

Produce a plan for their data Organize and document their data consistently Store and back-up their data securely Select an appropriate data repository for archival and sharing

No prior experience with data management is required! This session is perfect for anyone who wants to feel more confident organizing, storing, and sharing their data in clear and practical ways.

Details: Any preparatory work for the session can be found on its information page. This virtual workshop will be recorded. The recording will be posted to the Sherman Centre's Online Learning Catalogue.

Facilitator Bio: 

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Danica Evering holds expansive experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.

Data Management Plan Bootcamp (Virtual)

Our popular DMP Bootcamp is back, reformatted into a hands-on online intensive for remote researchers on the go! Data Management Plans (DMPs) are both incredibly helpful research tools and increasingly required for grants but it can hard to know how to complete a Data Management Plan if it’s your first time. This session is carefully timed for researchers completing a CFI or Tri-Agency grant. If you're in the process of creating a DMP, either for a grant application or for your own research, join RDM Services for this afternoon session. The RDM Services team will provide tailored guidance as you write your plan online--we'll pop into your breakout rooms to make sure everything is going smoothy. Come away with a clear path forward or even a finished DMP!

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

Identify the 5 key components of a data management plan (DMP). Compare strong and weak responses in each section of a DMP. Develop a tailored outline, or potentially a complete draft, of their own DMP!

This participatory session is especially relevant for researchers at all levels in the beginning stages of a research project or streamlining best practices for their research team. Come on your own, send your research staff, or bring your whole research group. Let us know if you're joining as a research team - we'll make sure you get an online breakout room to work together in! Bring your own snacks to your desk and enjoy this dedicated time to work on your plan with extra support.

Details: Any preparatory work for the session can be found on its information page. This workshop will not be recorded.

Facilitator Bio: 

Danica Evering (they/them) is a Research Data Management Specialist grounded in curiosity and a deep commitment to ethics. Danica is available to help students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies, Danica fosters active interest in RDM across disciplines, with a knack for engaging researchers who might not even realize they have data to manage. Outside of work they sing in a choir, play PC games, maintain an art writing practice, grow a garden, contribute Wikipedia articles, and run.

Data Management Plan Bootcamp (In-Person)

Let us be your body double with this in-person bootcamp! Data Management Plans (DMPs) are both incredibly helpful research tools and increasingly required for grants but it can hard to know how to complete a Data Management Plan if it’s your first time. This session is carefully timed for researchers completing a CFI or Tri-Agency grant this fall. If you're in the process of creating a DMP, either for a grant application or for your own research, join RDM Services for this afternoon session. The RDM services team will provide tailored guidance as you write your plan on site, and we'll have some light snacks and refreshments to keep you going. Come away with a clear path forward or even a finished DMP!

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

Identify the 5 key components of a data management plan (DMP). Compare strong and weak responses in each section of a DMP. Develop a tailored outline, or potentially a complete draft, of their own DMP!

This participatory session is especially relevant for researchers at all levels in the beginning stages of a research project or streamlining best practices for their research team. Come on your own, send your research staff, or bring your whole research group. Let us know if you're joining as a research team - we'll make sure you get a table to work together at!

Details: Any preparatory work for the session can be found on its information page. This virtual workshop will be recorded and shared on the same page, and discoverable via the Sherman Centre's Online Learning Catalogue.

Facilitator Bio: Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Best Practices for Managing Data in your Research

TIFU (Today I F'ed Up) by losing a ton of data for my research - Have you ever seen a description like this on Reddit? Are your desktop and downloads folders a jumble of files named Data-finalFINAL-USETHISONE? Is all of your lab's data stored on a single drive located conveniently under a sprinkler system? Join research data management services and learn how investing a small amount of time in organizing your data now can save you a lot of time and prevent future headaches. In this introductory workshop, learn about research data management best practices. We will go over best practices for data planning, storage, organization, preservation, and sharing.

By the end of the session, participants will be empowered to:

Produce a plan for their data Organize and document their data consistently Store and back-up their data securely, Select an appropriate data repository for archival and sharing.

No prior experience with data management is required! This session is perfect for anyone who wants to feel more confident organizing, storing, and sharing their data in clear and practical ways.

Details: Any preparatory work for the session can be found on its information page. This virtual workshop will be recorded and shared on the same page, and discoverable via the Sherman Centre's Online Learning Catalogue.

Facilitator Bio: 

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Danica Evering holds expansive experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.

Communities Empowered by Data 101: Tools and Best Practices

Community-led data practices empower and support community-led grassroots actions and initiatives. Data are valuable and we need to work together to take care of them, from the initial planning stages of a project to where it lives after the work is complete. In this 101-level session, we’ll introduce the Community Research Data Toolkit—a new Pressbook filled with guidance and resources to support communities in taking an active role in data management. Topics include using data management plans as tools for building trust, exploring options for long-term community-held data, and more. Following an interactive overview, we'll save some time to workshop challenges and possibilities through a set of applicable case studies.

Participants will learn to:

Summarize RDM best practices and what Data Management Plans and Data Deposit look like in community-based research Locate available tools, training, and guidance Appraise the tools and prepare to implement Community control for data in your work.

This session is designed for non-profits, activists, community organizations, and the researchers and data professionals who work with them!

Details: This workshop will be recorded. The recording will be posted to the Sherman Centre's Online Learning Catalogue.

Facilitator Bio: 

Danica Evering holds broad experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Subhanya Sivajothy (she/her) brings a background of research in data justice, science and technology studies, and environmental humanities. She is currently thinking through participatory data design which allow for visualizations that are empowering for the end user.

Students deserve Research Data Management! Teaching with the RDM Educators Kit

Your students deserve to know about Research Data Management! In this brand-new "train the trainer" session for educators, RDM Services will prepare you to prepare your graduate and undergraduate students for increasing grant and publisher requirements for Data Management Plans and Data Deposit.

"Do my students even have data to manage?" you might ask. Au contraire mon capitane, they do! If research involves biological samples or survey results, you may feel confident you’re working with research data. But what if your research is rooted in creative practice? What if you’re looking for the specific heat of a material under a magnetic field? Data have many formats: text, numbers, images, recordings, software, algorithms, workflows. Research Data Management is caring for data through the research lifecycle: planning to archiving.

We'll discuss integrating our new RDM Educators Kit in the classroom, from 2-minute slide inserts to RDM class visits to multi-class Data Management Plan creation as an "open hand of cards." We'll end with a working session to imagine challenges and possibilities!

Participants will learn to:

Summarize RDM best practices and what Data Management Plans and Data Deposit look like in your field Locate available tools from RDM Services Prepare to implement Research Data Management tools in the classroom.

This session is great for educators from faculty to sessional instructors to graduate students ready to bring RDM into their classrooms!

Details: Any preparatory work for the session can be found on its information page. This virtual workshop will be recorded and shared on the same page, and discoverable via the Sherman Centre's Online Learning Catalogue.

Facilitator Bio: 

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Danica Evering holds expansive experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.

Data Management Plan Bootcamp (In-Person)

Let us be your body double with this in-person bootcamp! Data Management Plans (DMPs) are both incredibly helpful research tools and increasingly required for grants but it can hard to know how to complete a Data Management Plan if it’s your first time. If you're in the process of creating a DMP, either for a grant application or for your own research, join RDM Services for this afternoon session. The RDM services team will provide tailored guidance as you write your plan on site, and we'll have some light snacks and refreshments to keep you going. Come away with a clear path forward or even a finished DMP!

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

Identify the 5 key components of a data management plan (DMP). Compare strong and weak responses in each section of a DMP. Develop a tailored outline, or potentially a complete draft, of their own DMP!

This participatory session is especially relevant for researchers at all levels in the beginning stages of a research project or streamlining best practices for their research team. Pair this with our Data Deposit Bootcamp May 19, 2026 for a spring research data management intensive for graduate researchers and research staff. Come on your own, send your research staff, or bring your whole research group. Let us know if you're joining as a research team - we'll make sure you get a table to work together at!

Details: This workshop will not be recorded.

Facilitator Bio: 

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Danica Evering holds expansive experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.

Data Deposit Bootcamp (In-Person)

Data deposit and data sharing are increasingly recognized as best practice to support open research, reproducibility, research integrity, collaboration, and more. Disciplines, funders, and journals are increasingly requiring researchers to share or deposit data. But how do you get your dataset ready for sharing? What's the best repository to share it in? With light snacks and refreshments to sustain you and specialists on-hand to answer any questions, you'll end this session with ready-to-submit data...or submitted or even published data!

By the end of this 3-hour session, you will be able to:

Identify the appropriate repository for their dataset. Outline documentation and metadata best practices Develop a README file that thoroughly describes the dataset being deposited. Organize datasets in preparation for data deposit, including metadata entry.

If you have a dataset that's ready for deposit or that you'd like to get deposit ready, bring it along. No dataset? No problem! We have a sample dataset you can use to go through the process and learn how to deposit data.

This session is ideal for researchers, staff, and students preparing to share data for a publication, grant, or project—and for anyone interested in open data best practices. Graduate students who have completed their thesis work are especially encouraged to attend! Pair this with our Data Management Plan Bootcamp May 12, 2026 for a spring research data management intensive for graduate researchers and research staff.

Details: This workshop will not be recorded.

Facilitator Bio: 

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Danica Evering holds expansive experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.