Houston voices

Tips for optimizing data management in research, from a UH expert

Here's your university research data management checklist. Graphic byMiguel Tovar/University of Houston

A data management plan is invaluable to researchers and to their universities. "You should plan at the outset for managing output long-term," said Reid Boehm, research data management librarian at University of Houston Libraries.

At the University of Houston, research data generated while individuals are pursuing research studies as faculty, staff or students of the University of Houston are to be retained by the institution for a period of three years after submission of the final report. That means there is a lot of data to be managed. But researchers are in luck – there are many resources to help navigate these issues.

Take inventory

Is your data

  • Active (constantly changing) or Inactive (static)
  • Open (public) or Proprietary (for monetary gain)
  • Non-identifiable (no human subjects) or Sensitive (containing personal information)
  • Preservable (to save long term) or To discard in 3 years (not for keeping)
  • Shareable (ready for reuse) or Private (not able to be shared)

The more you understand the kind of data you are generating the easier this step, and the next steps, will be.

Check first

When you are ready to write your plan, the first thing to determine is if your funders or the university have data management plan policy and guidelines. For instance, University of Houston does.

It is also important to distinguish between types of planning documents. For example:

A Data Management Plan (DMP) is a comprehensive, formal document that describes how you will handle your data during the course of your research and at the conclusion of your study or project.

While in some instances, funders or institutions may require a more targeted plan such as a Data Sharing Plan (DSP) that describes how you plan to disseminate your data at the conclusion of a research project.

Consistent questions that DMPs ask include:

  • What is generated?
  • How is it securely handled? and
  • How is it maintained and accessed long-term?

However it's worded, data is critical to every scientific study.

Pre-proposal

Pre-proposal planning resources and support at UH Libraries include a consultation with Boehm. "Each situation is unique and in my role I function as an advocate for researchers to talk through the contextual details, in connection with funder and institutional requirements," stated Boehm. "There are a lot of aspects of data management and dissemination that can be made less complex and more functional long term with a bit of focused planning at the beginning."

When you get started writing, visit the Data Management Plan Tool. This platform helps by providing agency-specific templates and guidance, working with your institutional login and allowing you to submit plans for feedback.

Post-project

Post-project resources and support involve the archiving, curation and the sharing of information. The UH Data Repository archives, preserves and helps to disseminate your data. The repository, the data portion of the institutional repository Cougar ROAR, is open access, free to all UH researchers, provides data sets with a digital object identifier and allows up to 10 GB per project. Most most Federal funding agencies already require this type of documentation (NSF, NASA, USGS and EPA. The NIH will require DMPs by 2023.

Start out strong

Remember, although documentation is due at the beginning of a project/grant proposal, sustained adherence to the plan and related policies is a necessity. We may be distanced socially, but our need to come together around research integrity remains constant. Starting early, getting connected to resources, and sharing as you can through avenues like the data repository are ways to strengthen ourselves and our work.

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This article originally appeared on the University of Houston's The Big Idea. Sarah Hill, the author of this piece, is the communications manager for the UH Division of Research.

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The 250,000-square-foot building is the new home for four key research areas at Rice: advanced materials, quantum science and computing, urban research and innovation, and the energy transition. Photo courtesy of Rice

As the academic year officially kicks off, professors have started moving in and Rice University has opened its largest core campus research facility, The Ralph S. O’Connor Building for Engineering and Science.

The 250,000-square-foot building is the new home for four key research areas at Rice: advanced materials, quantum science and computing, urban research and innovation, and the energy transition. The university aims for the space to foster collaboration and innovation between the disciplines.

"To me it really speaks to where Rice wants to go as we grow our research endeavors on campus," Michael Wong, Chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, whose lab is located in the new facility, said in a video from Rice. "It has to be a mix of engineering and science to do great things. We don’t want to do good things, we want to do great things. And this building will allow us to do that."

At $152 million, the state-of-the-art facility features five floors of labs, classrooms and seminar rooms. Common spaces and a cafe encourage communication between departments, and the top level is home to a reception suite and outdoor terrace with views of the Houston skyline.

It replaces 1940s-era Abercrombie Engineering Laboratory on campus, which was demolished in 2021 to make way for the new facilities. The iconic sculpture "Energy" by Rice alumnus William McVey that was part of the original building was preserved with plans to incorporate it into the new space.

The new building will be dedicated to its namesake Ralph O'Connor on Sept. 14 in Rice's engineering quad at 3 p.m. O'Connor, a Johns Hopkins University grad, became a fan Rice when he moved to Houston to work in the energy industry in the 1950s.

The former president and CEO of the Highland Oil Company and founder of Ralph S. O’Connor & Associates left the university $57 million from his estate after he died in 2018. The gift was the largest donation from an estate in Rice's history and brought his donations to the university, including those to many buildings on campus and endowments and scholarships, to a total of $85 million.

“How fitting that this building will be named after Ralph O’Connor,” Rice President Reginald DesRoches said in a statement last summer. “He was a man who always looked to the future, and the future is what this new engineering and science building is all about. Discoveries made within those walls could transform the world. Anybody who knew Ralph O’Connor knows he would have loved that.”

The dedication event will be open to the public. It will feature remarks from DesRoches, as well as Rice Provost Amy Dittmar, Dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences Thomas Killian, Chair of the Rice Board of Trustees Robert Ladd and Dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering Luay Nakhleh. A reception and tours of the new building will follow.

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