Data Management

Supporting researchers at University of Delaware

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Data management is the process of overseeing data generated before, during, and after a research project. Any research will require some level of data management, and funding agencies are increasingly requiring scientists and scholars to plan and execute good data management practices. (See The White House policy on Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research [February 22, 2013] and the 2023 NIH Data Management and Sharing policy [effective for NIH funding received after January 25, 2023])

This site offers a portal of tools and resources to help with the management of your research data throughout the data’s life cycle.

Please contact us if you need help. If we can’t directly answer your question, Research Computing staff will get you connected with someone who can!

Data Management Supported Sources

Below we list the specific data management sources that the Research Computing staff can help you work with and what specific services we provide for each resource. There are other resources for data management available at the UD Library.

DMPTool

DMPTool is a resource researchers can use to draft data management plans that meet funding agency requirements. It is a service the University of Delaware has partnered with the University of California Curation Center of the California Digital Library. It’s formatted as a template to address specific aspects of managing research data including data types, ownership, description, preservation, and sharing. The tool guides you through the process of creating a ready-to-use DMP for your specific research project and funding agency. To get started, simply click on the Get Started button on the DMPTool home page and select the University of Delaware in the drop-down list, then click the Next button. You will be presented with the University of Delaware Shibboleth Authentication Service. Simply log in with your UDelNet ID and password. From the “My Plans” page, choose the granting agency from the drop-down list and begin building your DMP by filling in the text boxes in each section of the plan. You can edit, save, export to rich text, and drop your completed plan in your grant proposal! It’s that easy!

Data Sources

Research Computing staff can help researchers navigate, advise and consult about these data sources.

ICPSR

The University of Delaware is a member of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). It is the world’s largest archive of digital social science data. ICPSR acquires, preserves, and distributes original research data and provides training in its analysis. They also offer access to publications based on their our data holdings. Researchers and students use ICPSR to write articles, papers or theses using real research data, and to conduct secondary research to support findings or current research, or to generate new findings. ICPSR data are also often used as introductory support material in grant proposals. Data producers take advantage of ICPSR’s services to preserve and disseminate their primary research data, and often to fulfill funder requirements for data management plans. Instructors use ICPSR’s educational resources to introduce students to the principles and practices of data analysis in order to support quantitative literacy efforts.

GIS

GIS data sources are available for the following categories: State and Local; Transportation; Administrative; Demographic, Marketing, and Business; Imagery and Remote Sensing (Orthophotography, Panchromatic, Multispectral, Hyperspectral); Hydrologic, Marine, and Coastal; Geologic, Terrain, Soils, and Elevation; Historical; Natural Hazards; Vegetation and Crop; Atmospheric (Meterological and Climatological).

Google Dataset Search

Google Dataset Search is a search engine for datasets.

Using a simple keyword search, users can discover datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the Web.

US Census Bureau

American FactFinder provides access to all surveys and censuses conducted by the US Census Bureau.

Institutional Research and Effectiveness*

University of Delaware Institutional Research and Effectiveness provides dashboards released to the campus community such as Enrollment, Human Resources, Path to Prominence, Comparators, Diversity, and more. Dashboards are accessible and have drill down capability based on security privileges. Please send comments and suggestions to ir-udew-it@udel.edu.

WRDS*

WRDS subscription is administered by the University of Delaware Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics. All Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics faculty, staff and students are exempt from the annual subscription fee. All others must pay the annual subscription of $250. For more information, please contact Gary Field at gfield@udel.edu or get started by registering your UD email, if your affiliation with the University of Delaware is Faculty, Staff (IT / Librarian), Visiting Faculty, Ph.D., Masters Student, Research Assistant (Supervised students only), or Class (Faculty requestor only).

The list of available datasets through UD’s subscription includes:

Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) is the award-winning research platform and business intelligence tool for over 40,000+ corporate, academic, government and nonprofit clients at over 400+ institutions in 30+ countries. WRDS provides the user with one location to access over 250 terabytes of data across multiple disciplines including Accounting, Banking, Economics, Finance, ESG, and Statistics. It also provides flexible data delivery options including a powerful web query method that reduces research time, the WRDS Cloud for executing research and strategy development, and the WRDS client server using PCSAS, Matlab, Python and R.