Data

• Ohio State’s Research Data Policy outlines the responsibilities and rights concerning access to, use of, and maintenance of data resulting from research planned and conducted by faculty, students, and staff employees of the university.
• The Office of Research Compliance supports and promotes ethical research practices at Ohio State and provides faculty, post-doctoral, graduate, and undergraduate researchers with a comprehensive list of important general policies.
• The Office of Responsible Research Practices provides administrative support services to university researchers that facilitate research, improve review efficiency, and ensure regulatory compliance for all research involving human subjects (IRB), animals (IACUC), and recombinant DNA (IBC).
• The Office of Legal Affairs supports researchers in navigating issues related to the creation, acquisition, protection, and commercialization of intellectual property

Metadata is the documentation and context which makes your data re-usable. It includes both file-level information and overarching project information. Metadata is best collected systematically and continually throughout the research process. Examples of metadata include:

• rationale for the research
• descriptions of experiments
• methods, protocols, or other standard practices
• units of measurement, dates, times, 
• analyzes, including justification for missing values, transformations, quality assurance procedures, etc. 
• where your data are stored and backed-up
• definitions of any acronyms, terms, or codes (sometimes called a data dictionary or glossary)

For more information regarding keeping metadata in lab notebooks, check out MIT's Instructions for Using Your Laboratory Notebook.