Environmental Conservation Library Resources : Data Management

Research Data Services (RDS) is a free resource for anyone on the UW-Madison campus that provides consultations, best practice information, and education and training on research data management and sharing. We help make your data citable, open, and publicly accessible.

1. Use a data repository to find and share data.
   • DataOne: A community-driven project providing access to data across multiple member repositories, supporting enhanced search and discovery of Earth and environmental data.
   • Environmental Data Initiative Data Portal: Digital archive of environmental and ecological data, emphasizing data from projects funded by the NSF Division of Environmental Biology. 
   • Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network Data is available through various data repositories.
2. Organize your data with thoughtful file naming and versioning.
3. Document your data and code.
4. Securely store and backup data. UW-Madison data storage options: Data Storage Finder

Don’t see the information you’re looking for above? You can always contact RDS with specific questions about your data.

Tidy Data (open access article)

Wickham, H. (2014). Tidy Data. Journal of Statistical Software, 59(10), 1 - 23. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.18637/jss.v059.i10

Tidy data is a standard way of mapping the meaning of a dataset to its structure. A dataset is messy or tidy depending on how rows, columns and tables are matched up with observations, variables and types. In tidy data:

1. Each variable forms a column.
2. Each observation forms a row.
3. Each type of observational unit forms a table.

Ecological Data Sharing (open access article)

Michener, W. K. (2015). Ecological data sharing. Ecological Informatics, 29, 33-44. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2015.06.010

Highlights

• Data sharing has evolved slowly and unevenly due to incentives and disincentives.
• "Big ecology” policies have pioneered the initial movement to open data.
• Research sponsors, publishers and scientific societies drive sociocultural change.
• Information technologies like metadata tools and repositories promulgate sharing.
• Emerging best practices support data openness and sharing in ecology.

Practical Guidance for Integrating Data Management into Long-Term Ecological Monitoring Projects (open access article)

Sutter, R. D., Wainscott, S. B., Boetsch, J. R., Palmer, C. J., & Rugg, D. J. (2015). Practical guidance for integrating data management into long‐term ecological monitoring projects. Wildlife Society Bulletin, 39(3), 451-463. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/wsb.548

Long‐term monitoring and research projects are essential to understand ecological change and the effectiveness of management activities... Recent papers have provided broad recommendations for data management; however, practitioners need more detailed guidance and examples. We present general yet detailed guidance for the development of comprehensive, concise, and effective data management for monitoring projects...

Explore tools and techniques to manage your data and track your research impact.

UW-Madison

• Data Science Hub: Workshops, consultations, and more to help researchers learn the skills they need to reproducibly write code and analyze data. 
• Information Technology Software Training for Students: A variety of free technology classes designed to meet the needs of students.
• Libraries Graduate Support Series: Free workshops that cover tools and techniques for data analysis, grant funding, and research impact.
• Libraries Micro-courses: Short, nongraded courses focused on a particular topic that you complete at your own pace. Topics include: research data management, grants & funding, copyright & fair use, and more.
• Libraries Research Support: A portal to many of the resources covered in this course guide as well as information on patents, copyright, and managing your sources.
• LinkedIn Learning: Free tutorials for R, SQL, Tidy Data, Python and more.
• Social Science Computing Cooperative (SSCC) statistical software classes: Free workshops on R, Stata, NVivo, and more.

Other Resources

• DMPtool: Free templates and examples of data management plans. After clicking on the "Get started" button, use the UW-Madison institutional affiliation (Option 1) and log in with your NetID and password.
• OpenRefine: Free download and short tutorials about this tool that cleans your data quickly and efficiently.
• Open Science Framework: Not just for science, but a free workflow and collaboration tool for research and scholarship in all disciplines.
• ORCiD: This free program provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and helps you track your published research.
• Tabula: Free download and instructions for this tool that extracts data are locked inside PDFs.