Managing Data to Meet Shrinking Budgets and Growing Needs Part 1

In a world of decreasing funding and increasing demands for large temporal and spatial analyses, it is imperative to have good data management plans. A number of primary funding sources, like the National Science Foundation, require a data management plan in grant proposals. With a plan in place, data collected will be a product that will maintain integrity through time and across various boundaries. Proper data documentation is integral to understanding how to analyze and share information. In order for fisheries and aquatic scientists to sustain funding, foster collaboration, and increase organizational productivity, we need to be able to create data products that are high-quality, communicable in the short and long term, and include thorough metadata. A well thought out data management strategy can create efficiency, save resources and promote sharing of information within and between organizations. By following the data management lifecycle from planning to analyzing and storing your data properly, you can produce higher caliber data that can be shared across organizational, geographic and regulatory boundaries.