Research Data Management

Trent University's Research Data Services Librarian provides in-depth consultation services to discuss your research data needs and explore the options and services available for you to manage and curate research data throughout your project. They can help you

  • create a data management plan to meet funding and publishing requirements
  • prepare to find or collect quality data to support your research goals
  • select appropriate software and tools to analyze, visualize and securely store your data
  • document, share and preserve your data for maximum research impact. 

Visit our Contact Us page to book a consultation or request online help.

What is research data?

Research data includes all kinds of information collected and used to support research methods and findings. This can include statistics, written notes, recordings, pictures, code, and much more.

What is research data management?

Research data management (RDM) is an overarching process that guides how you handle your research data from the very beginning of your project. This includes how you will collect, record, store, share, and keep data safe during active project phases and how you will license and preserve data for long-term use after the project is finished.

There are many potential benefits to managing research data responsibly. At minimum, you should manage your research data to

  • make sure your data is correct and complete
  • avoid inadvertently losing your data
  • conduct ethical research and protect privacy
  • meet funding and publishing requirements
  • make your research more visible and easier to share.

There are many repositories and sites where you can discover data shared by researchers from Canada and other countries. Some sites like Lunaris act as discovery services, which means you can search many repositories from a single interface.  

  • Lunaris is a bilingual data discovery service that provides a single point of search across thousands of datasets from more than 100 Canadian repositories and collections. Use Lunaris to find multidisciplinary research data and primary sources shared by post-secondary institutions, government departments, research organizations, and national initiatives to support technical or scientific inquiry, scholarship, and creative practice.
  • There are many international and discipline-specific repositories where you can discover and access research data. The Registry of Research Data Repositories (Re3data) compiles many of these sources into a global registry of research data repositories from different academic disciplines.

In Canada, many publishers and funders have requirements for researchers to ensure research data is available for long-term access and reuse. This means that researchers are often required to deposit data to a trusted repository and make it available for reuse where possible.

Research data repositories can differ in terms of the type and volume of data they support. Choosing an appropriate repository depends on many factors such as the volume and types of research data, disciplinary expectations, issues related to ethics and privacy, data ownership, and more. 

Your Research Data Services Librarian can help you select an appropriate repository and guide you through the process of preparing and depositing your research data to ensure compliance and to maximize the impact and visibility of your research. 

Research repositories supported by Trent Library

  • Trent University's Dataverse collection is part of Borealis, the Canadian Dataverse Repository. Borealis is a free, bilingual platform managed by Scholars Portal and is intended as a general-purpose repository that is suitable for all disciplines. It supports open discovery, management, sharing and preservation of Canadian research data. Trent researchers are invited to deposit data in Trent University’s Dataverse Collection.
  • Trent University Digital Collections is a digital library of resources created at Trent or by members of Trent University. Contact the library about depositing pre- or post-prints, conference papers, audio files, and other research outputs and course materials that may not fit the definition of research data.

Other research repositories 

  • Canada's Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR) is a bilingual publishing platform for sharing and preserving Canadian research data. FRDR is a curated, general-purpose repository built for large datasets. Faculty members, librarians, and researchers affiliated with eligible Canadian institutions and organizations may deposit data in FRDR. Faculty can also sponsor designates such as students, research assistants, postdoctoral fellows, visiting faculty, collaborators, and others to submit data.
  • There are many international and discipline-specific repositories where you can deposit research data. The Registry of Research Data Repositories (Re3data) compiles many of these sources into a global registry of research data repositories from different academic disciplines.
  • The Open Access Directory (OAD) provides a list of repositories and databases where you can find and access open data.