Use case: How a data management plan helped build good research data habits early in a research career
Use case: How a data management plan helped build good research data habits early in a research career
Jorgelina Leguizamon is a PhD student at the Department of Health Science and Technology at Aalborg University. In her PhD project, she works on developing self-powered active wound dressings based on zinc-air batteries, hydrogels and electrical stimulation.
Her research combines material design, testing of electrical properties and laboratory experiments to explore how new types of wound dressings can support the treatment of skin lesions in a safe and functional way.
Jorgelina participated in CLAAUDIA’s PhD course on data management, where data management plans (DMPs) were a central topic. As part of the course, participants work on developing a DMP for their own research project.
A DMP describes how research data is handled throughout a research project — from data generation and processing to storage, documentation and sharing. For Jorgelina, working with a data management plan from the beginning of her PhD project has not only created structure around her research data. It has also given her an early understanding of good data management that she can take with her in her research career:
Working with a Data Management Plan from the beginning of my PhD project has been a great advantage. The DMP process has given me a clear overview of the types of data I generate and how they are best organised, documented and stored throughout the project
Working with a DMP has also made data management a more integrated part of Jorgelina’s research process and made it easier to maintain an overview in her daily work. According to Jorgelina, the process has helped her build good habits from the start of the project:
“It has helped me structure my workflows from the beginning and made it easier to work systematically with experiments, analysis and documentation. At the same time, it has increased data security and clarified how data is handled responsibly in relation to storage, access and sharing.”
Looking back on the work with the DMP, Jorgelina particularly highlights how it has supported both the structure and quality of her project:
Overall, working with the DMP has strengthened the structure and quality of the project and served as a useful tool for documenting the research process, including in relation to formal requirements and communication about the project. Personally, I have greatly benefited from working with a DMP from the start of the project, and I can clearly recommend it to others
Get support with your data management plan
At CLAAUDIA, we support researchers at Aalborg University with both practical guidance and feedback throughout the data management planning (DMP) process.
For all questions and requests, please contact us through the service portal here.