Research data management (RDM) is a broad concept that encompasses the organization and documentation of data collected and analyzed throughout the research process, as well as the effort to make that data easily accessible now and in the future. Managing data is more complex than simply saving your files on a thumb drive or cloud server. Proper RDM starts with a Data Management Plan (DMP) which comprises strategic methodology for documenting, formatting, and storing data.
Research Data Lifecycle by LMA Research Data Management Working Group is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This guide is aimed to help researchers who are working in Health Sciences. If you are looking for data management resources for other disciplines, please visit the Ekstrom Library's guide on Research Data Management.
Harvard Libraries have developed a checklist that breaks down each of the 7 elements of the Data Lifecycle. Though not exhaustive, this checklist is a great way to get organized from the onset of your project and keep organized for the duration. The checklist as a PDF is available below.