Postgraduate Course: Fundamentals of Data Management (PGPH11088)

Course Outline
School	School of Physics and Astronomy	College	College of Science and Engineering
Credit level (Normal year taken)	SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate)	Availability	Not available to visiting students
SCQF Credits	10	ECTS Credits	5
Summary	Better and more effective approaches to managing digital research data are becoming increasingly important in computational science and beyond. The scientific data sets that underpin research papers can now occupy many gigabytes of storage, and are increasingly complex and challenging to work with. This course introduces students to the ideas, methods and techniques of modern, digital research data management. It will cover: - Why managing research data better matters, and why it's hard - Data management planning: a required part of twenty first century research - Data formats: structuring data and keeping them useful - Metadata: describing data and keeping them useful - Publication and citation of research data - Persistence, preservation and provenance of research data - Licensing, copyright and access rights: some things researchers need to know
Course description	Not entered

Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites		Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations		Other requirements	None

Course Delivery Information

Academic year 2017/18, Not available to visiting students (SS1)		Quota: None
Course Start	Semester 1
Timetable	Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info)	Total Hours: 100 ( Lecture Hours 22, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 11, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 65 )
Assessment (Further Info)	Written Exam 100 %, Coursework 0 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment)	100% examination
Feedback	Not entered
Exam Information
Exam Diet	Paper Name		Hours & Minutes
Main Exam Diet S1 (December)			2:00

Learning Outcomes
At the end of this course, students should understand: - the importance of research data management in general, and in relation to their own potential futures as researchers or technologists - the broad global landscape of data management initiatives, infrastructures and projects, and the challenges they address - the essential elements in a research data management plan, how to create one, and how to implement it in practice - the importance of structuring research data, what standard data formats exist and when and how to use them - the importance of descriptive metadata, how to write good metadata (and how to avoid bad metadata), what standard formats exist and when to use them - how data are published, cited and preserved, and the issues and challenges we face in recording research data for the long-term - some of the legal pitfalls research data creators and users need to avoid