Research Policies and Data Management
The Rice Rivers Center (RRC) is committed to the long term preservation of research data and outputs. To ensure all scientific data and outputs are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR), we ask our researchers to adhere to our Data Management Policy.
Researcher Expectations
If you are planning for a project at the center, you are expected to:
- Register: Complete the project registration form.
- Plan: Create a data management plan.
- Deposit: Share your data via a public repository within 1 year of project completion.
- Attribute: List RRC as an affiliation on published research outputs.
The full Data Management Policy provides detailed guidance and resources to help you meet these requirements.
Additional Resources
Please attribute RRC in all datasets, publications, and presentations derived from our center or support:
- Affiliation Text: VCU Rice Rivers Center, 3701 John Tyler Memorial Highway, Charles City, Virginia 23030, USA
- Research Organization Registry ID: https://ror.org/03k69wj69
RRC is a member of the Research Organization Registry (ROR) which is a global, community-led registry of open persistent identifiers for research organizations. Including our ROR ID in your research outputs ensures your research is cleanly and reliably linked to RRC across global academic databases. ROR is designed to be supported in core scholarly infrastructure (e.g., Crossref, DataCite, ORCID). For guidance on adding RRC's ROR ID to your publication metadata or ORCID Record, you can view the following resources:
All Station users who use vertebrate animals in their work at the Rice Rivers Center must either possess a current and approved VCU Institutional Animal Care and Use (IACUC) Protocol, or provide a non-VCU IACUC protocol to the station.
If you hold a non-VCU IACUC protocol, please contact the VCU Data Manager prior to beginning your project so that the station has proper accounting of your protocol.
Virginia Commonwealth University has an Animal Welfare Assurance on file with the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (PHS Assurance #A3281-01).
- For more details about program requirements, IACUC protocol submission process, Occupational Health and Safety Program, training requirements, and policies and guidelines, please visit the VCU Animal Care and Use Program webpage
Researchers and instructors at the Rice Rivers Center are required to follow University regulations and policies concerning lab and field safety.
Researchers are expected to generate and maintain a Data Management Plan throughout their research project to ensure high quality data and facilitate the data publication process.
- Read the RRC Data Management Plan Guide
- Download the RRC Data Management Plan Template and fill it out for your research project.
- For choosing a repository for long-term data preservation, look at the Generalist Data Repository Comparison Chart.
- View the VCU Libraries - Research Data Management Guide for additional guidance and tools for data management planning.