MANTRA (Research Data MANTRA) is a free, self-paced online course in research data management, produced by the University of Edinburgh. It is one of the longest-running open RDM training resources available and is commonly used by university libraries, research offices, and individual researchers as a low-cost way to build baseline data management literacy without committing to a paid program.
What MANTRA is
MANTRA was originally developed as the “Research Data MANTRA” project, funded by JISC’s Managing Research Data programme, and built by the Data Library team at EDINA (Information Services, University of Edinburgh) working with the university’s Institute for Academic Development. The course launched based on a needs assessment of three University of Edinburgh postgraduate training programmes in the social sciences, clinical psychology, and geoscience, and its content still reflects that disciplinary grounding. It is now maintained by the University of Edinburgh’s Research Data Service; the current version is described as the course’s sixth release.
The course sits at mantra.ed.ac.uk and is openly accessible with no registration paywall. It is listed in third-party training registries used by the research-support community, including ELIXIR’s TeSS (Training eSupport System), which is a useful signal of how it is used and referenced outside the University of Edinburgh itself.
What the course covers
MANTRA is organized into a sequence of web-based learning units that a learner works through at their own pace. Based on the current course structure, the units cover:
- Research data in context — why RDM matters and how it fits the wider research lifecycle
- Data management planning — the purpose and content of a data management plan (DMP)
- Organizing data — file naming, version control, and folder structures
- Preparing data for archiving — documentation and formats suited to long-term reuse
- Keeping research data safe — backup, storage, and basic security practice
- Protecting sensitive data — handling personal or confidential research data
- FAIR sharing and access — data sharing practice aligned with the FAIR Data Principles
- Data handling tutorials — hands-on practice exercises in four analysis environments (SPSS, NVivo, R, and ArcGIS)
Alongside the written units, the course includes recorded interviews with academics discussing real data management problems they have encountered, which grounds the material in practical rather than purely procedural terms.
Format, cost, and assessment
MANTRA is free to use and requires no institutional affiliation or subscription. It is self-paced — there is no cohort schedule, live instructor, or fixed start date — and the University of Edinburgh describes it as a non-assessed course: it is built to help a learner understand and reflect on RDM practice rather than to test or formally grade them. Publicly available course material does not describe a certificate of completion. If your institution needs a documented, credential-bearing training record (for example, to satisfy an internal RCR or research-integrity training requirement), MANTRA is better used as a foundational self-study resource alongside, rather than instead of, a program that issues a formal record — see CASRAI’s guide to DAMA CDMP certification for research data management professionals for a credentialed alternative.
Who MANTRA is for
The course materials are organized around four audience groups, each with guidance on how the content applies to their role:
- Research students (postgraduate and doctoral researchers managing data for the first time)
- Career researchers (postdoctoral and established researchers who need a working RDM reference)
- Senior academics (principal investigators responsible for a project’s overall data governance)
- Information professionals (research data librarians, data stewards, and research support staff who advise researchers on RDM)
Because it makes no assumptions about institutional systems or a specific funder’s requirements, MANTRA works as generic, transferable RDM training regardless of which university or funder a learner is working under — unlike training built around one institution’s own repository or DMP tool.
How MANTRA fits into RDM skills-building
For research administrators, MANTRA is best understood as foundational literacy training rather than a compliance mechanism. It does not replace funder-specific requirements, institutional policy, or a repository’s own submission guidance — it builds the underlying vocabulary and habits (documentation, sensitive-data handling, FAIR-aligned sharing) that make researchers able to act on those requirements when they encounter them. It pairs naturally with CASRAI’s wider RDM coverage:
- Use Research Data Governance: Roles, Policies, and Lifecycle Frameworks to see where a course like MANTRA fits within an institution’s broader data governance structure.
- Use the data steward role entry to see how MANTRA’s “information professionals” audience maps to a formal institutional role.
- Use CASRAI’s guide to The Carpentries for a comparison point — Software/Data/Library Carpentry teaches hands-on computational and data skills through live, instructor-led workshops, which is a different delivery model from MANTRA’s self-paced written units, and the two are often used to complement each other rather than as substitutes.
- See CASRAI’s research data management hub for the fuller set of RDM planning, governance, and repository content this guide sits alongside.
MANTRA compared with other RDM training routes
Research offices building an RDM training pathway for staff and students typically combine several resources rather than relying on one:
- MANTRA — free, self-paced, non-assessed; strongest for foundational RDM concepts and reflection.
- The Carpentries (Software/Data/Library Carpentry) — free or low-cost, live and workshop-based; strongest for hands-on coding and data-handling skills.
- DAMA’s Certified Data Management Professional (CDMP) — paid, exam-based; strongest where a documented, credential-bearing qualification is required.
None of these substitutes for funder- or institution-specific RDM policy training, since none is written against a particular funder’s data management and sharing requirements.
Frequently asked questions
Is MANTRA really free?
Yes. MANTRA is openly accessible at no cost and does not require an account tied to a specific institution.
Who created MANTRA?
It was originally developed by the Data Library team at EDINA, University of Edinburgh, with funding from JISC’s Managing Research Data programme, and is now maintained by the University of Edinburgh’s Research Data Service.
Does completing MANTRA give you a certificate?
The publicly available course material does not describe a formal certificate of completion; it is presented as a non-assessed, self-study resource rather than a credentialing program.
How long does MANTRA take to complete?
There is no fixed duration published by the course — it is self-paced across eight units, and completion time depends on how much of the material and the software practice exercises a learner works through.
Is MANTRA only for social science researchers?
Its original content was informed by postgraduate training needs in social sciences, clinical psychology, and geoscience at the University of Edinburgh, but the core RDM concepts it teaches (planning, organizing, archiving, security, sensitive data, FAIR sharing) are discipline-general and are commonly used outside those fields.
How does MANTRA relate to a funder’s data management plan requirements?
MANTRA teaches the general concepts behind a data management plan, but it is not written against any specific funder’s DMP template or mandatory requirements — researchers still need to check their funder’s own DMP guidance separately.
