MANTRA: research data management project

Research data online learning materials: MANTRA project (September 2010 - August 2011) funded by JISC Managing Research Data programme.

Research Data MANTRA has developed online learning materials aiming to reflect best practice in research data management grounded in three disciplinary contexts: social science, clinical psychology, and geoscience.

The resulting materials are being embedded in three participating postgraduate programmes and made available through the Institute for Academic Development and EDINA for use by all postgraduate and early career researchers at the University of Edinburgh as well as made available generally through an open license.

In addition to web-based learning units that students can work through at their own pace, the course includes video interviews with leading academics about data management challenges, and practical exercises in handling data in four software analysis environments: SPSS, NVivo, R and ArcGIS.

The resultant materials are available on a website for anyone to use and will also be deposited with an open licence in JorumOpen, a national repository for open educational resources.

The project was led by the Data Library team at EDINA, part of Information Services at the University of Edinburgh.