MANTRA is a free online course for those who manage digital data as part of their research project.
Information Professional
Senior Academic
Career Researcher
Research Student

Learning Units: Select one to start

  • Types of research data
  • Why managing data is important
  • Challenges of data in society
  • Good practice and responsible research
  • Checklists and planning tools
  • Funder compliance
  • Naming and re-naming conventions
  • File and code versioning
  • Use of cloud collaboration tools
  • What is archiving and why archive your data
  • File formats and digital preservation
  • Data documentation & metadata
  • Backup and storage methods
  • Password safety and encryption
  • Secure sharing and collaboration
  • Data protection legislation
  • Ethical considerations and informed consent
  • Safeguarding sensitive data
  • Benefits and barriers to data sharing
  • Principles of FAIR sharing
  • Open data licences

Practice manipulating data in software analysis packages (SPSS, R, ArcGIS, NVivo) using open datasets with exercises in PDF.

The University of Edinburgh
Creative Commons