Roles and responsibilities

In any project, people need to know what their tasks and responsibilities are and what they can expect from others. This is especially important for collaborative projects that involve many researchers, institutions, and/or groups.

For NERC-funded projects, there are five key roles relating to research data handled during the project:

Project manager

Person officially designated as manager of a project and ultimately responsible for the use of research data in the project including meeting funder requirements, organisational policies and UK legislation.

Data manager

The project data manager has overall responsibility for creating a data management plan (DMP) that delivers what is required by the research funders, organisation policies and UK legislation. A data manager oversees all data activity in the project, coordinating between different groups or Work Packages where applicable.

In a small project, the role of data manager is often filled by the project manager. For larger projects, there may be several staff who each have responsibility for different data management tasks but coordinated by a single project data manager.

Quality manager

The project quality manager ensures that all the project data-related outputs meet quality standards before they are used or delivered. Their primary responsibilities include understanding stakeholder expectations and needs, outlining quality standards, and developing quality control processes.

Primary contact

The primary contact is a person with knowledge of how to access, troubleshoot, or otherwise deal with issues related to the research data for the project.

In most projects, the first person to contact with any data-related queries or issues will usually, but not always, be the data manager. It is useful to specify the primary contact in the data management plan, especially for larger projects.

Researcher

For the purposes of a data management plan, the researcher role includes everyone working on the project who is likely to collect, use or process data or data-related tools.

All researchers should read, understand and follow the project DMP and associated detailed documentation.