Template for a Data Management Plan to complete assignments for GRAD521 Research Data Management
You can use this template to edit your data management plan in GitHub.
This template is designed so that you will have a data management plan and a working webpage for the research project that you decided to use for GRAD 521.
GitHub pages is a static site hosting service. Once a repository is set up with Github pages, any file in the repository can be navigated to in a web browser. Markdown or html files (in this case we use Markdown) will be viewed as webpages.
Github is a website used to share data and allow multiple people to work on the same project. You will need a Github account and can create one here.
- Note: the url for the webpage will use either the username or organization name which sets it up. Try to make sure the URL will be appropriate to share with others and relevant to what is on the webpage.
There are two types of repositories on GitHub; public ones and private ones. Public repositories can be seen by and downloaded by anyone on the web but only edited by collaborators. Private repositories can only be seen by its contributors. Normally Github charges for private repositories but researchers can apply for a free private account by following these steps.
GitHub Pages are ALWAYS PUBLIC REGARDLESS OF THE PRIVACY OF THE REPOSITORY. This combined with the fact that ALL REPOSITORIES and ALL FILES are set up with pages means you must be certain there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO private information in the information that you post in a repository before you set it up with Github Pages.
Next you will need to create a new repository set up with Github pages by following the steps provided here.
- Note: Github pages does take some time to respond to new pages and edits so wait 3-5 minutes after making changes before assuming something went wrong
Next clone, download or import this repository.
Markdown was created to be easy to read and edit and we use this format for all the documents in this repository. Markdown files(.md) have some of the functionality of writing documents in an HTML format while still remaining easily readable. Github and Github Pages are set up to use Markdown already. The coding involved with formatting a Markdown document is easy to learn and you can find a guide for using markdown here. Some additional tips for creating markdown documents:
- There must be a space after the ##'s when making headers
- There is NO space when bolding and using italics; ie. bold not ** bold **
- If you want to force a line break put two spaces at the end of the line then press Enter. (ie. end of line." __ ")
- The guide shows the different ways to format hyperlinks but doesn't describe the different types of links. I describe the different links in other section below.
It is easiest to edit markdown files either by editing the documents through Github in a web browser or by using a text editor. Source code editing software such as Notepad++ or Atom are useful tools when editing code (e.g. text highlighting, indentation, etc), but not a requirement to edit simple Markdown. Avoid using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, as they are not plain text editors. Use Github's editor instead. To edit the content of your repository using Github navigate to your repository, click on the file you want to edit and click the edit (pencil) button on the top right of the page.
When you use Github Pages your repository is your webserver. Therefor, the file titled "index" will be the homepage of your website.
If the only page you want is the data management template document you can keep that document named "index.md". Now whenever you navigate to your repository URL you will get document. You may want a list of links with some basic text for the home page (for example, you may want to have more pages to have information related to the data management plan such as a metadata template or a protocol).
Github has also created a number of themes that change the appearance of your pages and can be viewed here. Instructions on how to apply the themes are here. This repository has no theme applied to it but you are welcome to try them out.
You can also use HTML to create/format any pages on your repository. For simplicity and to show what Markdown can do; nothing in this repository was written using HTML.
The materials in this repository are licensed as CC0. You are free to use, create derivatives and redistribute this template. Attribution is not required.