This course teaches you to look after research data across its whole life — planning, organising, securing, sharing, and preserving it — so your data is never lost, always findable, and as open as it safely can be.

It is for researchers who want to avoid the all-too-common data disasters and make their work verifiable and reusable.

What you’ll be able to do

By the end of this course you will be able to:

• write a basic data management plan;
• organise files with consistent naming;
• protect data with backups and security;
• share data following FAIR principles;
• preserve data for the long term;

The lessons

1. Data Management Planning — deciding up front how data will be handled.
2. Data Organization — naming and structuring files so they stay findable.
3. Data Storage & Security — backups (the 3-2-1 rule) and protecting sensitive data.
4. Data Sharing & Open Data — sharing under the FAIR principles.
5. Long-term Preservation — keeping data usable for decades.

How to study this course

Work through the lessons in order — each is a short read with a worked example, a quick exercise, and a hand-picked free resource. Use the Previous and Next buttons at the foot of each page to move along. There are no fees and no enrolment barriers; the course is open to everyone, and you can revisit it any time.

This courseware is provided free by FRELIP. Original text released under CC BY 4.0; linked resources remain under their own licences. Curated by the FRELIP Open Courseware editorial team.