MANTRA for Change

For data sharing, access and management in the future to become a higher priority within scholarly communication than it is now, new generations of scientists and scholars need to learn to do research in ways that support these ends. The Research Data MANTRA project (2010-2011) aims to develop online learning materials which reflect best practice in research data management grounded in three disciplinary contexts: social science, clinical psychology, and geoscience. The resulting materials will be embedded in three participating postgraduate programmes and made available through the university's Transkills programme for use by all postgraduate and early career researchers as well as made available generally through an open license and deposited in JorumOpen, a national repository for open educational resources. In addition to web-based 'chapters' that students can work through at their own pace, the course will include 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 project is a partnership between the Data Library in Information Services and the Institute for Academic Development, at the University of Edinburgh and is funded by JISC as a part of its UK programme, Managing Research Data