Research data is any material that helps you answer your research question. It supports your findings and forms part of the evidence base for your thesis.
On this page:
- What counts as research data
- Plan how you will manage your data
- Deposit your data in Apollo
- Third party copyright
- Further help and support
What counts as research data
Research data can take many forms. It might include:
- statistics, spreadsheets or survey results
- digital images, sound recordings or films
- transcripts of interviews or fieldwork observations
- artworks, published texts or musical scores
You will need to think about how to store, organise and share your data during your research and after your thesis is submitted.
Learn more about what research data is and how to manage it.
Plan how you will manage your data
A Data Management Plan (DMP) is a short document that outlines:
- what data you will collect or create
- how you will store and manage it
- whether and how you will share it
Writing a DMP at the start of your research can help you save time later and avoid problems when you are writing your thesis.
Learn more about how to create a good Data Management Plan.
Deposit your data in Apollo
You may create research data that supports your thesis, but is separate from it. You should also deposit this in Apollo, the University’s open access repository. This helps others discover and reuse your data and supports open research.
You can deposit data such as:
- computer code or software you have written
- statistical data
- raw data from experiments
Learn more about depositing your research data alongside your thesis.
Third party copyright
If your data includes material created by someone else, such as text, images or datasets, it may be protected by third party copyright.
You must get permission before you can make this data open access in Apollo. If you need more time to clear copyright, you can apply a 12-month embargo on your dataset.
If you cannot clear the copyright, you will not be able to deposit the data in the repository. In this case, you may be able to deposit it with your thesis under controlled access. This can be complex if your thesis has a different access level.
Learn more about third party copyright when using other people’s material.
Further help and support
If you have questions, or need advice on managing research data, please contact the Research Data Management team.