Manage Research Data

Actively managing your data throughout the research process enables reproducibility, reusability, and discovery, and can help maximize the impact of your research. Smithsonian Libraries and Archives and the Smithsonian's Research Computing Office's Data Management page have a variety of resources to help Smithsonian community members manage their research data. Questions? email: SI-RDM@si.edu

Data Management Plans​

A data management plan (DMP) documents how you will collect, record, and protect your data to ensure its future usability. Discover tools and templates for creating Data Management Plans, as well as a printable best practice document. ​

Data Repositories

A data repository holds data, and makes data available to use/reusue. Use this Guide to choosing a repository to find a general or specialized repository to meet funder or publisher requirements or your professional needs.

Describing Your Project

To enable discovery and citation, all research data should have both a corresponding data dictionary, that defines and describes the data itself as well as descriptive project metadata (aka citation metadata, a data record, a metadata record, or a dataset record).  Describing Your Project outlines the information and formats needed to enable you and others to find, reuse, and properly cite your data.

Filenaming, Organizing, and Working with Tabular Data

Ensure your data and data files are easy for both humans and machines to work with by using best practices for Filenaming, Organizing, and Working with Tabular Data.

Storing, Archiving and Preserving Data

To preserve data for future access, verification, and use, apply best practices for Storing, Archiving and Preserving Data.​