Mission/Vision

Our Mission

This mission of the Research Data Management Core is to sustain a robust ecosystem of research data management and sharing support that maximizes the impact of Carolina’s scientific enterprise.

Our Vision

Every researcher at UNC has access to the resources needed to harness the value of Carolina’s research data assets to unlock opportunities for transformative scientific discovery, innovation, and competitiveness.

Our Values

Catalyst for transformative science

Recognizing data as a first-class research output means treating it with the same importance as traditional research publications. This involves curating and archiving data in a way that ensures its long-term preservation, accessibility, and readiness for use with novel analysis methods and techniques. By doing so, data can serve as a catalyst for transformative science, enabling researchers to build upon existing research insights and outputs to make new discoveries and innovations.

Data democratization and data as a public good

By treating data as a public good, researchers can promote data democratization, ensuring that data is accessible and usable by a wide audience. This involves making non-sensitive research data available for public use as well as cataloging and archiving sensitive information such that it is still findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) while protected by adequate security policies, privacy protocols, and access request and provision mechanisms. UNC Dataverse and its sensitive data sibling repositories (coming soon!) allow researchers to share their datasets with the broader scientific community to support the common good and advance scientific knowledge.

Open Science as the default for scientific outputs

By promoting and supporting scientific practices that ensure research and its outputs are as accessible as possible to researchers, educators, and the public, open science mitigates barriers that keep data needed for new and novel scientific discoveries behind paywalls. Using, developing, and maintaining open source software to support data management and sharing initiatives ensures that these tools are available to the Carolina community and provide additional avenues for funding, collaboration, and coordination of research efforts and resources.

Rigor and public trust in science

Implementing reproducible research practices ensures that scientific findings can be verified and built upon by others. This includes maintaining detailed documentation of research methodologies, data collection processes, and analysis techniques, which upholds the integrity of scientific research and fosters public trust in science. Planning for data management and sharing helps to ensure that publicly-sponsored research data has the greatest impact possible and makes the best use of taxpayer dollars.