Section 1 – Introduction
What is this book and who is it for?
What is this? This toolkit introduces communities and the organizations and researchers who collaborate with them to concepts of research data management—such as data management plans and data deposit—to support their work. It is also a collection of guidance documents we made together with templates and examples for data management plans; roles and responsibilities for researchers, community members, and data professionals; and options for where data lives in the long term.
Who made it? We are community engagement workers, social justice advocates, organization representatives, librarians, research data management professionals, and researchers. Most of us are more than one of those!
Who is it for? This document is primarily for community organizations ranging from small to large and researchers collaborating with them. Research Data Management (RDM) professionals working with these groups are a secondary audience. This toolkit is an accessible way for all of those groups to understand data management and get on the same page about how we care for data: from when it is just a first idea to after it is archived.
What is it not? There is a current gap in terms of support for community research data, but no lack of valuable resources to support Indigenous data sovereignty led by Indigenous researchers and communities. This toolset is Creative Commons licensed and could be useful to Indigenous organizations as baseline draft documents that can be adapted, but it won’t address Indigenous data. Those undertaking research by and with Indigenous researchers and communities should reference the resources outlined in our land acknowledgement.
This toolkit does not have capacity to overtly support data management practices of Personal Health Information (PHI). While some of these resources may be relevant to health sciences researchers, there are added layers of data governance infrastructure required that this toolkit is not able to include. This is a potential future area for development.
These tools should not be used in partnerships with for-profit enterprises.
