## The Research Data lifecycle

How you manage your research data has a direct impact on the overall quality and integrity of your research. To fully understand how certain decisions affect your project, it is important to identify the key stages of research and map out your activities accordingly. By doing so, you can easily recognise potential bottlenecks in the project, implement appropriate safeguards, and take a proactive approach to your project. Of course, there will always be unexpected challenges that arise in a project but with good management and planning, these can have less impact on your progress.

The Research Lifecycle is a commonly used framework that outlines the stages involved in research. It maps research from the point of conceptualization to the final stage of dissemination. The lifecycle is broken down into 6 stages:

- Discover and Initiate
- Plan and Design
- Collect and Store
- Process and Analyse
- Document and Preserve
- Publish and Share

Often tasks will span over multiple stages, but in general we can categorise most tasks into one of the six stages of the research lifecycle. If you can map out the tasks which will take place in your research, it will be easier to create a clear timeline and plan for your overall project.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Follow the arrow to discover what happens at each stage.