Researcher

Data Carpentry has developed this course of data pre-processing with Open Refine, an open tool to work with data. The course covers several topics such as error correction and data formatting and harmonization.

Utrecht University has created a simple decision-tree tool that helps researchers to choose a generic repository that best fits their needs. To do so, criteria such as restriction of access and cost of the repository are taken into account.

The Digital Curation Centre has prepared a tool to guide researchers in their preservation strategy. Through a series of checklist, researchers are guided to reflect on what purposes the data could serve in the future, to consider what requirements they need to fulfill and what should be preserved according to the data reuse potential and its replicability. Finally, the costs of the preservation are considered to make a final decision.

Ghent University has elaborated an encryption manual for researchers. It begins with basic information about what encryption is and when is it needed. Then, it describes different encryption strategies and frames them into different scenarios, and provides step by step instructions for each of these scenarios.

The University of Helsinki created, upon request, a compact guide for researchers to help with research data documentation. It first introduces the basic elements of documentation, and then provides practical instructions and strategies to proceed with documentation during the research project, but also for the publishing phase.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a series of file organization handouts. The handout for version control briefly summarise different techniques for version control and provides an overview of the main differences between automatic change log platforms and tools.

This course prepare by the Software Carpentry guides through how Git (and GitHub) can be used to manage versions during a project. It starts with the basics (setting up Git and creating a repository), and follows with practical guidelines to track changes, collaborate or resolve conflicts. It has also dedicated sections about the impact of version control on Open Science, licensing and citations.

The UK Data Service has compiled a set of instructions and best practices to transcribe qualitative data from interviews. This guide seeks to provide advice to ensure methodological consistency and to increase the shareability and reuse of qualitative research data. It provides links to further instructions, examples and a template transcriber confidentiality agreement.

The CESSDA (Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives) Data Management Expert guide provides a specific chapter about processing data, which includes tips and examples on topics such as quantitative and qualitative coding, adequate weights of survey data and data quality assurance.

Utrecht University provides an overview of possible legal instruments and agreements that might be necessary to establish prior to data collection. The information is provided in a user friendly approach departing from the perspective of different stakeholders perspective: data subject, third party and data reuser. It then provides extended details of what it instrument entails with further guidance, templates or examples for each case.