Research Data MANTRA (http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/) is a free, non-credit course designed for postgraduate students and early career researchers which provides guidelines for good practice in research data management.

(Flickr Image by Soilse – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In recognition of the work done by Edinburgh University Data Library in developing this open educational resource, MANTRA has been evaluated and shortlisted in a report by the Research Information Literacy and Digital Scholarship (RILADS) project as one of 15 good practice examples designed to enhance information literacy skills of postgraduate students and early career researchers in UK Higher Education

RILADS aims to investigate and report on support available to students, staff and researchers to enhance digital literacy. There are two strands to the project. One is co-ordinated by Research Information Network (RIN) on behalf of Research Information and Digital Literacies Coalition (RIDLs), the other by SCONUL under the JISC Developing Digital Literacies (DDL) programme.

The RIN strand focuses on the identification and promotion of good practice in information handling and data management training and development across the HE and research sectors. The SCONUL strand aims to identify, harvest, and use materials to progress the development of digital professional expertise.

The full report and shortlist are available on the RILADS website: http://rilads.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/rilads-report/

MANTRA, the sole resource on the shortlist that is dedicated to research data management skills, has also been upgraded to Version 2 of the Xerte Online Toolkit, the e-learning development environment used by MANTRA to create the learning materials. This has the ability to deliver content using HTML5 rather than the Flash Player. This has a number of advantages in that you can deliver content to a much wider range of devices, and specifically you can deliver content to devices that do not support Flash.

Watch out for further MANTRA enhancements!

Stuart Macdonald
EDINA & Data Library